


Parallax

by theputterer



Series: the AU to the Nonsense AU [2]
Category: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016), Star Wars - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Ending, Alternate Universe, Angst, Drama & Romance, Established Relationship, Estrangement, F/M, Family Dynamics, Flashbacks, Humor, Marital Issues, Minor Character Death, Moral Dilemmas, NOT NONSENSE COMPLIANT, Retelling, Team as Family, This Is Not Going To Go The Way You Think, Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-10
Updated: 2018-01-07
Packaged: 2019-02-13 03:35:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 11
Words: 68,757
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12974997
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theputterer/pseuds/theputterer
Summary: In another universe, they are a family from the start.





	1. Cold Open

**Author's Note:**

> **THIS STORY IS NOT COMPATIBLE WITH THE CASSIAN ANDOR NONSENSE. PLEASE DO NOT POINT THIS OUT TO ME. BELIEVE ME, I KNOW.**
> 
> This story IS compatible with BLOOD BROTHERS.

“... I suppose it’s lovely here. The oceans are quite stunning, and the flora plentiful. I could do without much of the wildlife, however. It’s all so… Uncivilized.”

“You mean the native people.”

“ _People_ is a stretch. They look absurd, and they have the stupidest language, and culture. And _name._ What is it; gungar?”

“Gungan,” Cassian says, fighting the urge to roll his eyes.

The woman simpers, carefully brushing her perfectly coiffed red hair. Cassian is almost impressed she can even lift her arm; the platinum rings and solid gold bracelets around her wrist and fingers look heavy enough to subdue a strong nerf. He supposes growing up extremely wealthy makes one impervious to the weight of expensive jewelry.

Cassian wouldn’t know.

“We’ve only been here for five months, but I _miss_ Empress Teta,” the woman sighs. She has yet to actually introduce herself, but Cassian knows her name is Orla Thano; she’s the whole reason he’s in this particular bar in Theed, the whole reason he’s even on Naboo at all. “I miss being in the center of things, you know?”

“The literal center,” Cassian notes, as Empress Teta is quite literally almost the center of the galaxy itself.

Orla laughs, a loud, honking noise that almost makes him wince.

And he’s someone who has survived literal _torture._

“Darling, what was your name again?” Orla asks, evidently having not realized Cassian had also neglected to introduce himself.

“Joreth,” Cassian replies, smoothly, in an accented, Core World Basic that matches Orla’s, an accent that strips him of his identity, that masks him just as neatly as the expensive clothes he’s wearing.

“Joreth,” Orla repeats, flashing a smile of unnaturally white teeth. “I’m Orla.”

Her smile widens when Cassian takes her proffered hand, and presses a kiss to the back of it.

 _“Very charming, Captain,”_ a voice crackles in Cassian’s ear, but he refuses to turn and find the speaker, though he can certainly feel the speaker’s pale blue sightless eyes trained on his back.

“What brings you to this… System, Joreth?” Orla asks, refraining from calling Naboo something worse than its definite noun.

Cassian pauses, allowing himself a sip from the glass of whiskey at his elbow. He’s still working on his first glass, while Orla has powered through four silver-colored martinis.

 _“I demand a play-by-play of Cassian’s attempt at charm,”_ another voice, a woman’s, chimes in over the comlink hidden at Cassian’s ear.

 

* * *

 

Crouched in a dark basement, Jyn can’t help but grin at the expressions she imagines Cassian is fighting down in response to her teasing words.

Cassian can be charming when he wants to be.

She should know.

Jyn tosses her bangs out of her eyes, leaning over the dynamite she’s carefully wrapping around a support beam. Baze has insisted the dynamite is sound, that it will go off when he sets it off, but that it is up to Jyn to secure it properly, to ensure it takes the beam out entirely.

It is also up to Jyn to get out of the building before they take it down.

She’s escaped from tougher situations before.

She gets to her feet, and begins to walk, the wire line trailing behind her.

 

* * *

 

“That’s somewhat difficult for me, considering I am blind,” the sightless man watching Cassian and Orla from across the room says.

_“Like that’s ever stopped you from seeing every little thing.”_

Chirrut smiles at Jyn’s comment; she isn’t wrong.

“Another drink, sir?” a waiter asks, leaning over Chirrut, speaking unnecessarily loud, as if the blind man’s ears are as obstructed as his pale blue eyes.

Chirrut presses a finger to the comlink in his ear, temporarily blocking Cassian’s conversation with Orla.

“No,” Chirrut says, offering the man a winning smile. “I believe I will be leaving soon.”

 

* * *

 

“Business,” Cassian says at last, both in response to Orla’s question, and also as a reminder to the two voices chattering away in his ear.

They all have jobs to do.

 _“I don’t understand why I had to wait in the ship,”_ a third voice, a robotic one, interjects. _“I am clearly the most reliable and focused member of this team.”_

 

* * *

 

An Imperial droid sits in a ship, and for a being that cannot change its expression, it looks stunningly bored.

 _“The thing about Imperial droids, Kay, is that they tend to stick out,”_ Jyn says.

K-2SO abruptly drops the rations he’d been stacking.

“I am still the most reliable member of this team,” K-2SO insists. “And I have not been an Imperial droid in a decade. And besides; I was here _first.”_

 

* * *

 

“What kind of business?” Orla asks, tapping one two-inch long nail against her nearly empty martini glass.

“Gemstones,” Cassian replies, fighting a smirk at the way Orla’s blue eyes widen in newfound interest. “I own a number of mines on Arkania. We trade in diamonds, mostly, but we’re looking to expand our business.”

“Oh. That’s… That’s very important work.”

_“I can hear her slobbering from here.”_

_“I can see_ _it.”_

 _“Chirrut, you’re still_ blind.”

Cassian sighs, softly enough Orla can’t hear him, but loudly enough that the commentators in his ear can.

 _“Leave the captain be,”_ a new voice, a man’s deep and tired voice, intones.

 

* * *

 

From a rooftop, a large man dressed in worn brown clothes frowns over a datapad.

He would much prefer to do this the old-fashioned way: blasters blazing, in a knockdown, beat-up brawl.

Unfortunately, this is not his call to make.

He sighs, and types a figure into the datapad.

A two minute countdown appears on the screen, flashing, waiting to begin.

 

* * *

 

Orla is eyeing Cassian like he’s an actual diamond.

_“But we never get to tease him.”_

_“That is categorically false. Jyn, according to my calculations, you spend approximately twenty-one percent of your time in public with Cassian teasing him, another thirty-one percent of the time fighting with him, and another nine percent of the time talking about how much you want to--”_

“Enough about me,” Cassian says, sharply, and that is definitely a comment mainly for the peanut gallery. He can hear Jyn and Chirrut’s combined laughter, and even a soft huff that is Baze’s way of expressing amusement.

 

* * *

 

Jyn lets herself laugh as she walks down the dark halls of the Imperial Intelligence outpost in Theed, her long hair covering the comlink in her ear, her arms casually swinging, one hand holding on to a maintenance worker’s bag. She brushes a hand down the front of the black uniform she’s dressed in, already eager to get it off.

She passes a handful of stormtroopers, a droid or two, and a small group of Imperial officers. None of them give her a second glance, uncaring of the young maintenance worker walking quickly through the corridors.

Jyn turns, and ducks into a supply closet.

She has to stack a couple buckets on top of each other until she can reach the ceiling.

She jabs an elbow into the opening of a ventilation pipe, and climbs in.

“I’m headed your way, Baze.”

 

* * *

 

Cassian turns to Orla, offering her a warm smile. “You said you’ve only recently moved to Naboo. What’s brought you here?”

“My husband’s work,” Orla says, pursing her lips in a way she is probably used to garnering sympathy with. It doesn’t exactly work on Cassian. “He’s been stationed here for the next four months, but they keep sending him off-planet, so I don’t even understand why we had to move here.”

“What does he do?”

“He’s in the Imperial Military,” Orla says, scoffing. “He does something for advanced weapons research.” Orla’s eyelashes flutter as she speaks, and while her feelings towards her husband seem apathetic at best, acrimonious at worst, there is no denying: she’s proud of what he does.

“Advanced weapons research,” Cassian repeats. “Important work.”

“Yes. But I don’t want to talk about my _husband,_ Joreth.”

 _“Jyn?”_ Baze asks.

_“Start the countdown. I’m nearly there.”_

Orla’s hand moves, coming to rest on Cassian’s thigh. He keeps his posture relaxed, his face smooth and interested.

From the corner of his eye, he sees Chirrut get to his feet, and begin to walk towards the door.

 

* * *

 

On the rooftop, Baze studies the datapad.

It beeps once, and then the numbers begin to flash, counting down from one hundred and twenty seconds.

He heaves himself to his feet.

He leaves the datapad, and walks towards the stairs.

 

* * *

 

“My apartment is five blocks from here,” Orla says, leaning in close, her minty breath, tinged with the acrid taste of alcohol, blowing over Cassian’s face. Her hand slides another inch up his thigh. “And my husband is off-planet for another twenty-four hours. And I can think of a _lot_ of things I’d like to do before he gets back.”

_“Orla makes a compelling argument, Cass.”_

 

* * *

 

Jyn is out of breath from crawling through the pipe, but she can see light ahead.

She pulls a vibroblade from her pocket, jabbing it into the grate, cutting a hole.

She slips through, spilling out onto gray sidewalk, in time to hear K-2SO’s undignified exclamation at her last comment.

_“What!? Jyn, you--”_

_“Captain, your droid’s exclamation nearly burst my eardrum--”_ Chirrut.

 _“That’s just what we need, a blind and deaf warrior--”_ K-2SO.

“I’m out,” Jyn says.

She gets to her feet, looking around, taking in the deserted alley. With no one else in sight, she unzips the maintenance worker’s uniform, letting it drop to the ground, and kicking it aside. She adjusts her jacket, and unwinds the gray scarf from around her neck, wrapping it around her head instead, pulling the lower half up to cover the bottom half of her face.

Once that’s done, she breaks into a sprint, running away from the building.

 

* * *

 

“I think it’s time we get out of here,” Cassian murmurs, and Orla beams, leaning in closer still.

The voices in his ear pause, taking in the order meant for them.

_“My husband, the flirt.”_

_“Cassian is not a flirt,”_ K-2SO says, seemingly taking Jyn’s comment as a personal offense.

Orla’s nose brushes Cassian’s, and she closes her eyes.

Cassian presses his free hand to the side of his face, blocking out the discussion in his ear, making sure Orla hears none of it, her face so close to his.

“I would still like to hear more about Imperial advanced weapons research,” he says, keeping his tone light and vaguely interested.

He might as well get all the information he can from Orla, before he has to go.

“My husband doesn’t tell me much,” Orla pouts, and she is clearly a powerful woman unused to being kept out of things. “He really only likes to complain about his co-workers. Lately it’s been all _Erso_ _this, Erso that._ It’s so terribly--”

Cassian forgets himself.

Abruptly, he leans back, and stares.

“Erso? Galen Erso?”

Orla stares back at him.

 

* * *

 

Baze stands on the street, and looks at his chronometer.

"Ten, nine--"

 

* * *

 

Orla is frowning now.

“Yes, Galen Erso,” she says, her confusion so pronounced she has stopped her hand from traveling any further up Cassian’s leg. “How do you--”

And then she screams, as a huge explosion shakes the bar, the floor, and the whole block. The windows of the bar are blown out, sending glass flying through the air, and Orla is only saved from being shredded to pieces by Cassian shoving her to the floor, and diving over her.

He shields his head with his arms, waiting for the trembling to stop, and then he looks up.

A huge smoke cloud has polluted the clear, dark night skies over Theed. Fire curls through it, spitting and red, angry orange flames shooting like deadly meteors. A few hit neighboring buildings, leading to more explosions. Screams have also shattered an evening that is rapidly deteriorating, and sirens only add to the cacophony.

 

* * *

 

Jyn drops to a crouch as the Imperial Military outpost she has only just escaped from is demolished behind her, sending a cloud of gray smoke rolling through the streets, covering her head-to-toe in thick gray ash.

She closes her eyes, breathing through the gray scarf wrapped over her face.

Other pedestrians and Theed civilians are not as lucky, or prepared, and scream as the ash and smoke careen into their lungs. The sirens are loud, and moving rapidly.

“Let’s roll,” Jyn calls, hissing into the comlink.

She joins the masses fleeing from the destruction.

 

* * *

 

In a move honed by two decades of thievery and stealth, Cassian stretches back and finds Orla’s heavy purple purse, one she all but threw into the air with the fright of the explosion. With Orla preoccupied by the chaos around them, he digs through the purse, finding the circular bit of metal he’s been waiting to get his hands on all evening.

His fingers catch on something else, another metallic object, one thinner and more rectangular, but undeniably technological.

He doesn’t have time to investigate this further.

He takes the unknown object with it, sliding both pieces of tech into his jacket pocket.

Cassian turns back to Orla.

“Joreth,” she breathes, eyes wide, the shock of the explosion and confusion of the moment likely robbing her of greater speech. Cassian’s been there before. “What… What’s happening?”

He leans over her, and she physically shrinks away from the expression on his face.

It’s cold, and uncompromising.

It’s very loud in the bar, filled with loud, panicked chatter, the lights flickering, dangling wires sending sparks everywhere. Cassian can’t hear any of his team’s voices in his ear, and he’s quite sure this means they can’t hear him either.

This is for the best.

He has to find out more, and he will do whatever he needs to.

“Galen Erso,” he snaps, not bothering to mask his Festian accent any longer. “What’s he doing for the Empire? What’s he doing in advanced weapons research?”

“I don’t know,” Orla whispers, lips trembling. “He’s working on a project--”

“What kind of project?”

When Orla hesitates, Cassian moves his hand, applying light pressure to her throat. She catches his wrist, but he holds firm, and she begins to panic.

 _“I don’t know!”_ Orla shrieks. “I only know it’s important, it has to do with some weapon!”

“What kind of weapon?”

“I don’t know!”

Orla Thano is not a trained soldier, and her fear and panic is written all over her face.

He believes her, when she says she doesn’t know anything more.

He backs off, and gets to his feet.

“I have a flight to catch,” Cassian says, though Orla has not asked.

“But… But you--”

“Sorry,” Cassian says, not sounding or feeling very sorry at all. “But I’m married.” A moment later, remembering Orla’s similar status, he adds, “Happily married.”

And with that, Cassian shakes Orla off, stepping through piles of broken glass, jumping over fallen stools and tables, and throwing open a door that is hanging off its hinges.

Chirrut is waiting for him outside.

“You didn’t have to wait,” Cassian says, frowning.

“And deprive you of an opportunity to help an old, helpless blind man?”

“You’re not helpless,” Cassian replies, but he takes Chirrut up on the suggestion, pulling the other man’s arm over his shoulders, and letting Chirrut lean on him. Chirrut plays up the part, hobbling a little, leaning heavily on both Cassian and the thin cane in his free hand.

Stormtroopers are converging on the streets, shouting and calling orders, and two approach Cassian and Chirrut.

“Hold it,” one of the stormtroopers snaps.

“Please, my father-in-law’s been injured,” Cassian implores. “I am just trying to get him to safety.”

Chirrut gasps, his breaths stuttering, his head lolling a little, but makes sure to turn his sightless eyes to the stormtroopers.

The stormtrooper nods.

“Move along,” he allows.

“Thank you, thank you,” Cassian breathes, and he and Chirrut continue their slow walk through the carnage of the explosion.

Chirrut waits until they’ve reached the end of the block and the stormtroopers and police have vanished from sight, and then he straightens, pulling his arm from Cassian’s shoulders. He spins the cane around in his hand, shaking it once, so it returns to its full height, becoming a lightbow.

Chirrut smiles.

“I do like to think of Jyn as my daughter,” he says.

Cassian finally does roll his eyes.

 

* * *

 

They run the rest of the way to the ship, slowing only when they reach crowds of people swarming the Port of Theed. The explosion in the executive district of the city has set everyone on edge, and Cassian can hear more than one person bartering for and squabbling over immediate passage off the planet.

He shoves his way through the crowds, Chirrut following him easily, without any further guidance.

They reach the end of the Port, far from the gleaming ships destined for rich and exotic destinations, to the part of the Port filled with unsavory characters, criminals and thieves, hitmen and mob bosses. The kind of people the Empire denies exist, but cannot truly function without.

Night has fallen, and Cassian and Chirrut nearly disappear into the shadows.

They duck under a heavy metal awning, reaching a UT-60D U-wing starfighter, already rumbling, ready for imminent departure. Chirrut marches up to the door, and hits it three times with his lightbow, whacking the end of it in a distinct pattern.

The door slides open a moment later.

Baze looks exhausted, ash smeared over his face.

“You’re late,” he accuses.

“I was demonstrating my acting abilities,” Chirrut replies.

Baze gives a deep, familiar sigh, the sigh of the long-suffering, but allows them inside.

Cassian can hear the bickering from the cockpit from where he’s standing.

He gives a sigh identical to Baze’s.

“The Imperial outpost is completely destroyed?” he checks, turning back to Baze.

“And then some,” Baze says, allowing himself a small, gratified smile. “The Empire will never know what hit them.”

The voices from the cockpit increase in noise, and Cassian bites the bullet, and leaves Chirrut and Baze in the cabin.

“... I would have eliminated five point four minutes from the mission--”

“But that would have been another _five point four minutes_ that I would have had to deal with you--”

“We have known each other for five years, ten months, three weeks, and two days, and I maintain that this is far too long--”

“Hey, you haven’t added any warmth or joy in that time for me, either-- _”_

“I told Cassian we should have left you on Takodana, and this is a belief I have never lost--”

“Are we ready?” Cassian asks, raising his voice so Jyn and K-2SO become aware of his presence. They spin around, K-2SO turning in the co-pilot’s seat, Jyn turning from her standing position between the co-pilot and pilot’s seats

 _“Cassian,”_ K-2SO says, and though his expression as a droid can never change, his voice does, relief evident in all three syllables of the name. “I was telling Jyn that I think--”

“We’re all aware that you think, Kay,” Jyn snaps, and then turns to Cassian.

She smiles at him, and it’s a smile that makes him ache.

_What have you done, Galen Erso?_

“Hi,” Jyn says.

“Hi,” Cassian returns, automatically.

He swears to himself that he will tell her, soon.

If K-2SO could roll his eyes, he would certainly be rolling them now.

“Captain, we should leave,” K-2SO says. “The Empire is likely only minutes away from shutting down travel in and out of the city--”

Sirens, suddenly very close, split the air.

“That’s our cue,” Jyn murmurs.

“Go sit down,” Cassian says. Jyn nods, her hand briefly wrapping around Cassian’s shoulder and squeezing it gently, before she’s gone, to the main cabin of the ship, telling Chirrut and Baze that they’re about to take off.

K-2SO looks at Cassian.

“I still don’t like her.”

“That still won’t make me change my mind about her,” Cassian replies, to this argument that feels both very circular and very rehashed; with an outcome that never changes. “Let’s go.”

Wisely, K-2SO chooses not to fight, and instead follows Cassian’s direction.

“Rogue One, pulling away,” K-2SO says, setting coordinates.

Cassian points them to the sky, and they disappear into the stars.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Back in December 2016, when I was planning the story that would become GRAY AREAS, I had to decide if I was writing a "canon" take on Cassian's backstory, or a story where the ROGUE ONE gang knew each other ahead of time. ultimately, I chose to do the former, and so wrote GRAY AREAS. but I had an "outtake" from that other, AU story: BLOOD BROTHERS.
> 
> there are people who really like BLOOD BROTHERS, and when I mentioned being uncertain about my next project on tumblr, several of them suggested I write something to accompany it. mostly, they wanted more about the relationship between Cassian and Zeferino. so this story will include that.
> 
> I already wrote ROGUE ONE (see: the last eight chapters of GRAY AREAS) and I'm not interested in rehashing that, so. a bit different here. it's more Cassian focused, as per usual with me, and I'm totally writing it on the fly. it's more self-indulgent than anything else; it is not exactly how I would have done ROGUE ONE if they had asked me to (lol) but some of it is. it would be neat to wrap this up on the one year anniversary of ROGUE ONE (Saturday) but we'll see.
> 
> I am almost certainly doing this very unasked-for project to try and take my mind off how anxious/excited I am for THE LAST JEDI.


	2. The Setup

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Most of the files have been corrupted,” Draven continues. “Or made impossible to decrypt. The only thing we could discern for sure is a report of a weapons test, to take place in the Holy City of Jedha, in two days’ time.”

Davits Draven is grudgingly impressed.

Cassian knows this, because Cassian spent over five years working directly under Draven, and so he likes to think he’s gotten to know Draven pretty well; as well as any competent spy can know an equally competent spy, that is.

Draven flicks through Cassian’s report.

“The outpost has been destroyed?” he checks.

“Yes sir,” Cassian replies.

Draven asking is more out of protocol than anything else. The destruction of the Imperial Military outpost on Naboo has made holonet headlines across the galaxy. It’s been described as a terrorist attack, as the work of nefarious rebels, and neither of these descriptors are really incorrect. The Empire has promised swift and sure retribution for this ambitious assault.

Cassian would love to see them try.

“You retrieved the device tracking Thano’s movements?” Draven asks.

“Yes, sir,” Cassian says, and promptly pulls the circular tracking device from his jacket, sliding it across the table to Draven. The aide sitting next to Draven picks it up, turning it over in her hands.

“We’re very lucky Orla Thano assumes her husband is as unfaithful to her as she is to him,” Draven notes, eyes flicking over Cassian, who doesn’t so much as blink.

He knew why Draven had wanted him to be the one to interact with the mark, Orla Thano, on this mission. He happens to bear a slight resemblance to her husband, save for the fact he is some ten years younger, and even less interested in her than her own husband is.

“How long do you think we have before she realizes she’s lost the chip tracking her husband?” Draven asks.

Cassian shrugs. “The bombing rattled her, so it’s possible she will assume it fell out of her bag when I knocked her to the floor.”

Draven sighs. “We’ll have to assume we won’t be that lucky. We’ll see if we can get to him before she alerts him.”

“There’s something else.”

Draven looks at him, waiting.

“Orla said Thano is working on some kind of weapon,” Cassian says. “And she said it… Might have something to do with Galen Erso.”

Silence falls.

The aide at Draven’s side blinks, her eyes widening slightly. Cassian forces himself to remain still, and to keep his face impassive, as he learned to do as a child, running through the streets of wartorn Fulcra.

“Have you informed anyone else of this?” Draven asks, and by that he means, _Did you tell Jyn?_

“No,” Cassian says, and this is the truth.

“I see.” Draven looks at the table for a moment, and Cassian can practically see the gears in his head turning with thought. He braces himself.

But Draven doesn’t continue this thread.

“Anything else?” Draven only asks, already getting ready to stand.

“One thing.”

Draven and the aide pause, as Cassian retrieves the second device from his jacket.

It’s only the length of his index finger, and completely unremarkable, save for the fact it’s a data stick. Baze had looked the piece over on the flight from Naboo to Yavin 4, and determined it was definitely Imperial-made, but its contents were completely unknown to the naked eye. Uploading the data stick on the starfighter was an unnecessary risk, but this had not stopped the team from guessing what it contained.

Jyn suggested it had nothing of value at all, that it was filled with personal information compiled by Orla, including a list of names of the men she’d had affairs with.

K-2SO extrapolated, based off the occupation of Orla’s husband, that it contained critical information regarding the Empire’s movements on Mid-Rim Worlds like Naboo.

Baze, who was hungry and generally tired of his team’s loud predictions of the data stick’s contents, said it contained plans for the daily meals eaten on Imperial Star Destroyers.

Chirrut, who could usually be counted on to humor Jyn in such guesswork, said the contents were “dark.”

“Dark, but familiar,” he’d said, while the rest of his team frowned at him. “It is not good, but it is also… welcoming?”

This was not the first off-putting and bewildering statement from Chirrut, and so the team had mostly shrugged, and moved on.

Now, Cassian sits in front of Draven, and wonders what the data stick _really_ contains.

He couldn’t have said it in front of the others, in front of _Jyn,_ but if there is anything having to do with the Empire on it, he suspects Galen Erso’s name will be found within the data stick.

“Get this to encryption,” Draven says to the aide. “Tell them to break it, and quickly.” To Cassian, he adds, “Where did you get this?”

“Orla.”

“Did she mention anything about it?”

“No,” Cassian says. “But if it has to do with Thano’s work in advanced weapons research--”

“This could be valuable,” Draven murmurs, and nods. “It’s worth checking out.”

He gets to his feet, and Cassian mirrors him.

“You’re dismissed, Captain Andor.”

“Yes, sir.”

He leaves.

 

* * *

 

Cassian finds the team in the mess hall, as he had expected.

The mess hall is rather crowded, as it’s approaching dusk, and the last ships of the night are landing on Yavin 4, filled with hungry rebels tired from long missions, and eager for something _warm_ to eat. Cassian spots Chirrut surrounded by a small crowd of admirers, twirling his lightbow in his hands, sightless eyes bright with mirth. Baze is near him, as he always is, but he looks far less interested in Chirrut’s display than the other rebels are, displaying more interest in the plate of food before him.

Lounging against the wall, watching Chirrut’s impromptu lesson, is Jyn.

K-2SO stands near her, but his stance suggests he is only here for lack of somewhere better to be.

Cassian goes to her.

“Hey,” Jyn says, but doesn’t move, keeping her back to the wall and arms crossed over her chest. “What did Draven say?”

“Nothing unexpected.”

“But he is checking the data stick? Will he tell us what was on it?”

“I didn’t ask.”

But if it has to do with Galen Erso; he probably will.

Jyn sighs, lips twisting. Almost unconsciously, she lifts her hand, fumbling for the necklace around her neck. She wraps her fingers around the kyber crystal hanging from the end, her nails brushing the closed ovular locket it rests beside.

“What’s wrong, Jyn?” Cassian asks, watching this movement.

She looks up at him.

Mindful of the people crowding the mess hall around them, and likely also mindful of the former Imperial droid at their side, Jyn snags his hand, and pulls him away.

“Cassian? Where are you--”

“I’ll find you tomorrow, Kay,” Cassian calls.

K-2SO huffs, but knows better than to try and follow them.

Jyn leads him through the base, past rooms of weapons, past rooms filled with droid bits and other spare parts, past the main hangar, loud with the rumblings of ships and engines, past the long corridor leading to the command center, past a conference room, until she reaches the sector of base where soldiers sleep.

She finds their room, opening the door, and tugging Cassian into it.

She begins to pace, and so Cassian sits on the bed, and waits for her to speak.

“Just… What Chirrut said,” Jyn starts.

“You know better than to always take him at his word.”

“I’ve also known him longer than you have,” Jyn snaps, her worried expression turning quickly to irritation. “You didn’t see his face, Cass.”

“I know, the likelihood that there’s anything of value--”

“--Is minimal, I know. It’s not like we stole it from an actual Imperial officer. We stole it from a Sithspit harlot.”

This is actually the opposite of what Cassian was going to say, but he’s distracted by Jyn’s harsh language.

Jyn pauses at his silence, and glances back at him. Cassian sees a soft flush rising from her neck.

“You’re… jealous?” he asks, bewildered.

Jyn rolls her eyes. “Laugh at me, why don’t you.”

“I don’t understand _why.”_

“Kriff, don’t make me spell it out to you.”

He swallows down his confused and annoyed retort, and goes for something kinder.

“You have nothing to be jealous of.”

“I know _that,”_ Jyn snaps. “I know you only… I know you do whatever the mission asks you to, even when you don’t like it. And I don’t have to like it, either. And I don’t.”

They haven’t had this argument in a while, and Cassian isn’t even sure why they’re having it _now._

“What do you want me to say?” he asks. “That I love you? You already know that.”

Jyn has to look away.

It’s never been easy for her, dealing with love, dealing with commitment, dealing with _Cassian._ He turned up during a period of her life where she had accepted her solitude, her loneliness, and his kindness and refusal to be cruel was incomprehensible to her. On the flipside of this is Cassian, who grew up in a family unafraid to be affectionate, unafraid to voice their adoration.

Even if that family is all dead (or, in one particular case, might as well be dead) that lesson, the importance of reaffirming love, is something Cassian has clung to, and forced himself to remember.

“I know you do,” Jyn whispers.

“Then, please; _trust_ me.”

She looks at him, frowns, and goes to sit on the bed next to him.

He keeps still, and watches her, as she fishes the necklace he wears out from under his shirt, bringing the locket that matches the one she wears out with it.

She rubs her thumb over the locket.

“I know you love me,” she says.

The pendant is emblematic of that. It’s an old Festian tradition, with married couples wearing matching lockets, with a lock of their spouse’s hair tucked inside.

“My mother loved me, too,” she murmurs. “And she still left me.”

Cassian sighs.

She’s told him this story before.

“I’m not your mother,” he reminds her.

“Obviously.”

“Jyn--”

“It’s not that I think you’re going to leave me,” she says. “It’s that I worry you’re going to put the cause before me. Before us.”

He swallows, and Jyn feels the movement, her knuckles brushing his collarbone.

He’s less prepared to respond to this statement than he is to her worry he would be unfaithful to her.

“That’s…” He has to look away, a difficult thing to do, what with Jyn being so close. “That’s the life we live, Jyn. We’re… You and me, we’ve been in this our entire _lives._ We’ve lost our families, our homes, and… The cause, the Alliance? This is all we have.”

Jyn doesn’t look surprised at any of this.

“Do you never wish we could have more?” she asks.

 _Always,_ he thinks.

He wishes Jyn could have a home.

He wishes he never had to kill another person again.

Most of all: he wishes he could assuage her fear, and tell her he loves her more than anything else, more than the cause he has lost everything for.

He can do the next best thing.

“I asked you to marry me,” he reminds her. “And not for the Alliance, and not for the war, or because anyone ordered me to. I asked you to marry me because I _wanted_ to. Because I wanted to marry you, because I wanted us to have this.” He smiles, and adds, “It’s a far better reason to get married than the one you had.”

Jyn laughs. “It isn’t my fault I can’t always use my real name, and it _is_ handy to have real scandocs with someone else’s surname.”

“It’s sort of your fault you can’t always use your real name. You made the decision to become a criminal; Jyn Erso, wanted on… What is it now, eleven systems--”

“It’s mostly my father’s fault.”

Cassian quiets at that, Orla’s voice ringing in his head.

_“Yes, Galen Erso.”_

“I’m sorry,” Cassian whispers.

He _has_ to tell her what he knows.

“It isn’t your fault that my father is a scientist with too many Imperial friends,” Jyn says, shrugging. “And it doesn’t matter, anyway. Most likely, he’s been dead for at least a decade.” She pauses, and adds, “That’s what I’d like to believe, anyway.”

“Better that than working for the Empire,” Cassian murmurs.

Jyn looks at him. “That’s how you think of your brother, isn’t it?”

He swallows. “Yes.”

But Zeferino Andor is not dead.

Cassian has an alert out on his name; he’ll know when he dies, as the Empire will surely note the death of the senator from Fest, as inconsequential as that planet may be.

This doesn’t prevent Cassian from pretending his brother is dead.

“But Zeferino, he… He did save our lives, that one time, and so maybe--”

“Please, don’t,” Cassian snaps.

Zeferino is not a subject Cassian ever talks about. Not if he can help it.

Jyn brushes her fingers over his face.

“Maybe there can still be goodness in Imperials,” she murmurs.

“I know you believe that,” he replies. “But that won’t make me believe it, too.”

“I know.”

Before he can say anything else, she leans in, and kisses him.

It is a soft, warm kiss, meant to be more comforting and reassuring than anything else.

He revels in it.

She pulls away, and presses her cheek to his, her lips brushing his ear.

“Love you,” she says, in the softest of whispers.

It asks a lot of her, to say those words. She still isn’t used to them, even if her feelings are true, and remain the same. Cassian is grateful every time he gets to hear them.

He smiles, pressing his nose into her shoulder.

He will tell her about her father tomorrow.

 

* * *

 

Unfortunately, Cassian doesn’t get a chance.

They’re walking to breakfast when a soldier from Intelligence intercepts them, and tells them they’re being assigned a mission, an urgent one, with imminent departure following briefing.

“What the hell,” Jyn mutters, watching the soldier walk away.

It’s a fair reaction.

They normally get at least a few days in between missions, to rest and recharge, to get up to speed on what the Alliance has been up to during the time they were away. It’s the closest thing to a vacation any of them has ever had, and it is the only time Cassian and Jyn have to themselves.

This small time being taken from them; it’s a big deal.

He says as much, and Jyn rolls her eyes.

“Doesn’t mean I have to be thrilled about it,” she mutters.

That’s fair, too.

Chirrut and Baze are already in the command center when they enter it. Chirrut looks up and smiles, head turned in their direction, recognizing their presence in a way that will never not be unsettling to Cassian. Baze’s face is impassive as it usually is, skirting the line of boredom. He manages to nod at Cassian, and rewards Jyn with a hint of a smile.

K-2SO makes a beeline for Cassian.

“Cassian, I have been waiting for you for _hours--”_

“Unlikely,” Cassian mutters, because it’s definitely no later in the day than when he should be expected.

“General Draven insists he has an--”

“Urgent, and priority, assignment.”

The voice does not come from Draven, but from a fairly young woman dressed head-to-toe in bright white. Everyone in the room jumps to their feet at the sight of her, and K-2SO straightens to his full height, giving her his entire attention.

Mon Mothma smiles at them.

“Please,” she implores, gesturing for them all to relax.

Cassian doesn’t.

Draven is at Mothma’s side, and his face is tense, and pinched, and he’s looking directly at Cassian.

If Draven is wearing that expression--if Mothma _herself_ is to outline the parameters of this unknown mission--

Then this mission is, perhaps, the most important one any of them will undertake.

The others seem to agree, going by their stances. Chirrut’s face is devoid of any casual humor or warmth, instead blank, his head inclined in Mothma’s direction. Baze is sitting up, frowning, arms crossed over his chest.

And Jyn is staring at Mothma, green eyes wide.

Draven speaks before any of them can.

“We’ve recovered some of the files from the data stick brought back to us from Naboo, courtesy of Orla Thano,” Draven says. “From what we’ve discovered, it did belong to Peter Thano, though how it came to be in his wife’s possession is… Less certain.”

 _She stole it, most likely,_ Cassian thinks.

“Most of the files have been corrupted,” Draven continues. “Or made impossible to decrypt. The only thing we could discern for sure is a report of a weapons test, to take place in the Holy City of Jedha, in two days’ time.”

Mothma’s eyes are soft, and so apologetic, turned to Chirrut and Baze.

Because Chirrut and Baze came to the Alliance from Jedha.

The two men do not give anything away in their tense expressions.

“We’d like you to go to Jedha,” Mothma says, “And observe the test, and gather whatever intelligence you can on the weapon the Empire has been building. We believe… With Chirrut and Baze’s intimate knowledge of Jedha, along with Captain Andor’s experience, that Rogue One would be the best choice for such a mission.”

Chirrut and Baze do, technically, have ranks and titles within the Alliance, but both men prefer to shirk these formalities, and Mothma has always tried to be accommodating to her soldiers. Cassian has spent most of his life going from one rebellion to another, so the structure provided by the Alliance’s ranking system is somewhat welcome.

He’s also the only one who has embraced the Alliance’s official-unofficial uniform colors, of tans and browns. Chirrut continues to prefer his old Guardian of the Whills uniform, while Baze prefers function over style, and Jyn dresses almost exclusively in shades of gray and black. Cassian suspects she does this partially to irritate Alliance leaders.

They’re a mismatched group, but they work.

They’re the people who couldn’t fit in anywhere else.

“Jedha,” Jyn says, quietly.

Mothma turns to her, eyes beseeching, but Draven speaks before she can.

“We do not anticipate needing to get in contact with Saw Gerrera and his Partisans, but if need be, we expect you to get us through the door, Sergeant Erso.”

“I haven’t seen Saw in seven years, General,” Jyn snaps, her eyes lighting up with wildfire, as if Draven is unaware of this fact.

“And you spent seven years before that as one of his soldiers,” Draven replies, eyes cold to Jyn’s heat. “You have a much greater chance of getting to him than any other soldier in the Alliance.” He pauses, and adds, “This assignment is not a request, Sergeant.”

Jyn’s hands are tight in fists.

Cassian can practically feel the animosity, the fury, the _heartbreak_ , wafting off her.

Draven’s next words make everyone in the room freeze.

“Additionally, Sergeant, we have reason to believe this weapons test has something to do with your father, Galen Erso.”

Cassian closes his eyes.

He should’ve been the one to break the news to Jyn.

When he opens his eyes again, it is to see a very still Jyn, who is doing nothing to hide her shock. Her hands have slackened, her mouth somewhat parted, and Cassian’s heart skips a beat when he catches the tears pooling in her eyes.

“What…” She swallows. “Why? Why do you think… Why?”

And by that, she means, _He’s alive?_

“Captain Andor was given Galen Erso’s name by Orla Thano,” Draven replies.

Jyn does not look at Cassian.

Rather, she trains her gaze on the floor.

He can still feel the hurt radiating off her.

“It’s possible we might be able to track Galen Erso based off information gathered from Jedha,” Mothma says, gently, and Jyn’s head snaps up.

There’s a new light in her eyes, fleeting, but there nonetheless.

_Hope._

Hope that Cassian fears is misplaced.

Once an Imperial; always an Imperial.

He firmly believes this mantra to be true.

He moves to end the meeting.

“Go to the Holy City, and observe what the Empire is doing there,” Cassian summarizes.

“We’d be grateful for any information,” Mothma says.

“Do not leave without credible intelligence,” Draven says.

Cassian looks over the others.

They look back at him.

This mission may not be a request, but if they wanted to refuse it; he’d do his best to fight Draven over it.

He can’t find any objection in their faces, though Jyn is biting her lip, forcing back whatever she really wants to say.

Cassian turns back to Draven.

“We’ll leave right away,” he says.

 

* * *

 

Cassian helps Baze and Chirrut load their U-wing starfighter, while K-2SO gets the ship up and running, preparing it for the long flight across the galaxy.

Cassian has not seen Jyn since the meeting adjourned, and she all but ran out of the room.

As if he can read Cassian’s mind (not for the first time), Chirrut says, “You’re in trouble, Captain.”

“I know,” Cassian mutters.

“You should have told her,” Baze says.

“I know that, too.”

As if summoned, Jyn chooses that moment to appear, striding towards them out of the hanger of the base. She’s dressed for travel, her jacket zipped, her scarf slung around her shoulders, bag hanging from one arm. She eyes them as she approaches.

“Gossiping about me?” she asks, voice prickly.

“We would never,” Chirrut says.

Baze touches Jyn’s back, a gesture of solidarity, and climbs into the ship. Chirrut looks between Cassian and Jyn, smiles, and then follows him.

Cassian turns to Jyn.

“I should have told you.”

“Yes, you should have,” she says, voice painfully cool and detached. He hates when she does this, when she acts like he’s a stranger, though he understands why she does it now. “But you already knew that. My question is, why didn’t you?”

He sighs. “I didn’t know how to.”

Jyn pulls a skeptical face.

“Cass, part of your _job_ is to be able to talk to _everyone,”_ Jyn says. “To get them to open up, to get them to spill their secrets. To get them to talk about anything and _everything._ And you’re saying you didn’t know how to talk to _me,_ of _all_ people?”

“You’re not _all people,”_ he says. “And… Jyn, it’s your father. You told me just last night that you’d rather think him dead than working for the Empire.”

“Well, we know now it doesn’t matter what I think,” Jyn snaps, throwing her bag carelessly into the ship. “It is what it is. _He_ is what he is.”

“We might be able to find him.”

Jyn pauses, and looks up at him.

“And what happens if we do?”

“You get to talk to him,” Cassian says, quietly.

It is, he knows, what Jyn wants more than anything: to be able to talk to her father again. To find a lost member of her broken family. To see her father, and to try to understand why he made the choices he did.

To know if he ever stopped loving her.

“He’s an Imperial,” Jyn reminds Cassian. “A dangerous one. And you, you always insist Imperials cannot be turned. And I know it’s your brother that makes you this way.”

“Maybe your father is different.”

“That sounds almost optimistic, Cass.”

He can’t help but smile at her teasing tone, the old phrase that is not so much a joke as a hint at a fact.

Cassian is pessimistic, and cold, and expects the worst.

But Jyn is optimistic, and warm, and hopeful.

She’s light, while he has always been, at best, gray.

Her light was what drew him to her six years ago, on Takodana, when she was a smuggler and petty thief trolling for work, and Cassian and K-2SO stopped on the planet for a day in-between missions, headed back to the Corellian Resistance. Recruitment wasn’t Cassian’s main priority at the time; he was deeply entrenched in Draven’s top secret black ops team, and he hadn’t recruited anyone in a long time.

But he saw Jyn, sixteen years old, knife at her hip and bruise on her chin, stop in the street, in order to help a little girl who had fallen.

It was an understated act of kindness, the sort of thing Cassian had seen very little of over the course of his life.

He had followed her, and had evidently not been as subtle as he’d thought, because he’d rounded a corner and found himself slammed into the wall of a grimy alley, knife at his throat, and a pair of steely green eyes glaring up at him.

“Who the hell are you, and why are you following me?” She’d hissed, and even over a head shorter than him, and four years younger than him, her fury was something to behold.

She was overwhelmingly bright.

He thinks he might have fallen in love with her then and there, but it took them nearly two years to figure it out, and act on it.

He looks at her, almost six years down the line, at her light that has never faded.

“We can find him, Jyn,” he says.

She studies his face for a moment, and then nods. “Okay, Cassian.”

She hops into the ship, and Cassian goes to follow her, until he is stopped by Draven calling his name.

He glances at Jyn, who waves him off, and so he goes to Draven.

“Sir?”

Draven had been watching Jyn moving around in the ship, but he turns to Cassian when he speaks.

“Information on the weapons test is priority,” he says. “And you’re to send a report back as soon as you’re able. Alliance leaders want to know everything they can, as quickly as they can.”

Cassian nods, as none of this is surprising.

“Additionally, we’d like you to gather whatever you can on what Galen Erso is doing.”

This is less expected. Cassian stills, looking up at Draven, whose eyes are hard.

“Erso is, possibly, the most brilliant man the Empire has working in their science division,” Draven says. “Based off what Jyn has told us of her father, coupled with the fact he willingly joined the Empire when they came to recruit him… This is near certain.”

 _Willingly joined the Empire_ is a bit of a stretch. Galen had gone with the Empire, even after it murdered his wife, but his parting words to his young daughter had been insistence that he was only doing it to protect her.

Jyn has spent the thirteen years since trying to understand what this means.

“Find out where he is,” Draven says.

“And then what?” Cassian asks, dread curdling in his stomach.

He already knows.

Draven is a cutthroat, ruthless general. There is a reason he runs a secret, black ops team in Intelligence, a team Cassian was part of for years, for his adolescence, a team Cassian only left when he formed Rogue One with Jyn. Cassian was shaped by his cruel work in that team. Cassian knows Draven was less than pleased with his choice to leave it; but Draven also knows that Cassian will follow his orders when given them.

He is more dedicated to the cause than anything else.

And that includes Jyn.

“You find him,” Draven says, eyes searching Cassian’s face. “You kill him.”

Cassian swallows.

Draven knows what such an act would mean for Cassian, on a personal level. He knows what it would do to Jyn.

And still, he gives Cassian the order.

Because Cassian will not refuse the order.

There is nothing he would give up, in order to protect the Rebellion, to further the cause, to save lives that would be lost due to an Imperial scientist’s dangerous work.

Even if that scientist is the father of his wife.

To Draven now, Cassian nods.

“Yes sir.”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know ROGUE ONE has that scene where Cassian is transfixed by Jyn beating the shit out of stormtroopers, but I kind of think he would be more transfixed by an understated act of kindness. THAT would be the kind of thing he rarely sees, and would like to be close to. (This is somewhat similar to the explanation for that scene in GRAY AREAS.)
> 
> Cassian's relationship with Zeferino is discussed more in this story; it drives his character here. background into this relationship is offered in BLOOD BROTHERS, as is background covering Cassian and Jyn's relationship.
> 
> You know that WALLACE AND GROMIT scene where they're on the train, and Gromit is trying to lay down tracks before the train crosses them? That's me writing this story. quick and dirty.
> 
> Explanations of how this group got together will continue to trickle in to this story. for now, setting up the main plot: the trip to Jedha, and how it could've gone down differently.


	3. Allies & Obstacles

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jedha already looks dead.
> 
> “What does it look like?” Chirrut asks.
> 
> Cassian turns around, catching the desolate, sorrowful look on Baze’s face.
> 
> “Home,” Baze murmurs. “Or what’s left of it.”

_ “Be brave, Cassi.” _

_ Nineteen-year-old Nerezza shoots, and stabs, and punches, and kills deathtrooper after deathtrooper. _

_ She throws a grenade, and an Imperial shuttle explodes. _

_ “Yes, Ezza.” _

_ Cassian follows her. _

_ He follows her everywhere, and always. _

_ The snow is falling hard, frost creeping at the edges of everything, gray overwhelming them all. _

_ The ice plateau stretches for miles, covered in bodies. _

_ Nerezza throws herself on top of her thirteen-year-old brother as the bombs begin to fall. _

_ The bombs shatter the ice. _

_ The screams are endless. _

_ “Nerezza?” _

_ Seventeen-year-old Zeferino, clad in the gray uniform of an Imperial officer, lifts the blaster. _

_ Cassian watches in horror. _

_ “No!” _

_ The red light flies through the gray air, slamming into Nerezza’s chest. _

_ She falls. _

_ Zeferino looks at his younger brother. _

_ “This is not your war, Cassi.” _

_ “You killed Ezza.” _

_ Nerezza’s brown eyes stare unseeingly at a gray sky. _

_ Cassian trembles, and clings to her. _

_ “You are not Ezza, Cassi. And you are not me. You’re better. You’re  _ good.  _ Remember that.” _

_ Zeferino turns, disappearing into the gray light. _

_ “Zeferino! Zeferino!” _

“Cassian?”

 

* * *

 

“Cassian?”

Cassian opens his eyes.

K-2SO is staring at him, one arm outstretched, resting on Cassian’s shoulder.

“We are approaching Jedha,” K-2SO says.

“Right,” Cassian mutters.

He gets to his feet, moving back through the ship.

Jyn is asleep, her face pressed to the window, arms wrapped tightly around herself. But Chirrut and Baze are awake, holding hands, looking towards the window. Cassian ducks down, to better see out.

A dusty, brown moon hovers outside. It looks entirely unremarkable from space; sparse clouds dotting the atmosphere, jagged cliffs barely visible on the surface. Cassian has not seen Jedha before, and he can’t help but think this would be an excellent place to test an unknown weapon.

Jedha already looks dead.

“What does it look like?” Chirrut asks.

Cassian turns around, catching the desolate, sorrowful look on Baze’s face.

“Home,” Baze murmurs. “Or what’s left of it.”

Jyn, woken by the voices, gets to her feet, and goes to Chirrut’s other side.

He reaches for her automatically, and she lifts her hand to her neck, tugging the kyber crystal out from under her shirt. Chirrut’s hand finds the crystal, and wraps around it, and Jyn wraps her hand around them both.

“I am one with the Force, and the Force is with me,” Jyn whispers, and Chirrut exhales, shakily.

“I am one with the Force, and the Force is with me,” he repeats.

The two of them speak in unison, their soft chant, their quiet, pained prayer.

Baze avoids looking at them, focusing on the near-dead moon out the window.

Cassian remains still, and watches them all in silence.

 

* * *

 

Cassian’s opinion of Jedha does not change when he reaches the surface of the moon.

“Why is it so  _ cold,” _ Jyn mutters, wrapping her scarf more securely around her head, shivering under her jacket.

“Oh, you’re cold Jyn? That’s too bad.”

“Kay,” Cassian says with a sigh, turning to glare at the droid.

K-2SO doesn’t say anything more; but he doesn’t apologize, either. Cassian hadn’t expected him to.

Chirrut, meanwhile, is standing outside the ship with a wide grin on his face, his body titled towards the blurry blue sky overhead. Baze stands nearby, checking his repeating cannon, but occasionally sending fond looks Chirrut’s way. Neither of them have bundled up; the dry chill of Jedha is something they have both missed.

Cassian grew up on Fest, and is similarly immune to the cold.

But Jyn is someone who spent most of her adolescence on temperate planets.

“Do you want my parka?” Cassian asks, gesturing towards the dark blue parka he rarely travels without. He knows he won’t need it on this cold desert moon.

Jyn throws the parka an appraising look.

“It’ll only slow me down,” she decides, and Cassian grins.

“That might not be a bad thing.”

Jyn rolls her eyes. “Give me some credit. When was the last time I started an unnecessary fight?”

“Three months, one week, and one day ago.”

“That was a  _ rhetorical _ question, Kay.”

K-2SO powers on. “My answer is not incorrect.”

“Not incorrect, but it’s still--”

“Let’s get going,” Cassian says, intervening.

Sometimes he thinks the real war he’s fighting is between Jyn and K-2SO.

Sometimes he thinks he is more likely to end the war between the Alliance and the Empire.

When K-2SO moves to fall in line behind Cassian, Cassian turns and shakes his head, pressing a hand to K-2SO’s metal chest.

“No. You’re staying here.”

“I beg your pardon?” K-2SO demands, Jyn fighting a delighted grin behind him.

“If we were here to intervene on this weapons test, I would bring you,” Cassian says, keeping his voice firm. “But we’re only here to observe. We do not need an Imperial droid to do this, as we will be staying out of sight. And it’s important we have a reliable and quick get-away should we need it, which is why you need to stay with the ship.”

Cassian can practically hear K-2SO’s gears whirring, as he deliberates the validity of Cassian’s directions.

_ “Please,” _ Cassian implores.

K-2SO gives in, as Cassian knew he would.

“Fine,” he says, gracelessly. “I will stay with the ship.”

_ “Thank  _ you.”

K-2SO turns away, marching back to the ship, and Jyn opens her mouth--

“Don’t start,” Cassian snaps, and Jyn grins, but doesn’t speak.

The two of them hurry off, trailing Chirrut and Baze, who had decided whatever skirmish Jyn and K-2SO were getting into was not worth waiting around for.

 

* * *

 

The Holy City of Jedha is packed.

The crowded and loud city streets remind Cassian of Fulcra, the capital of Fest, the city he grew up in. There are vendors and merchants on all sides, cafes and shops erected haphazardly in every last bit of spare space, and the air is thick with pipe smoke, cooking food, and voices speaking a hundred different languages.

Somehow, Chirrut and Baze blend into the surroundings.

Cassian supposes it’s just an innate thing of born and raised Jedhans.

The data stick that contained the report of a weapons test in the Holy City neglected to specify where, and what time, and so the plan is for the four of them to split off into two teams (their usual separate groups of Chirrut and Baze, and Cassian and Jyn) and ask around for information. It is not the most detailed of plans, and liable to fail due to a thousand different variables, but it’s the only plan they’ve got.

“Lacking detail and open to spontaneity and disaster” is, by and large, the story of Rogue One, so this is not surprising, or particularly concerning.

“What were you dreaming about?” Jyn asks, as they walk through the city.

“What?”

“On the flight,” Jyn says. “You fell asleep, while Kay was flying. Your lower lip was twitching, and your fingers were trembling. You were dreaming; what about?”

The problem, Cassian thinks, with sharing a bed with someone, is how they come to understand your sleeping habits better than you do yourself.

“The day Nerezza died,” he says now.

“Oh.”

Jyn looks up at him, her relaxed expression turning sympathetic.

“Did you see--”

“Zeferino? Of course,” Cassian snaps. “He’s the one who killed her.”

_ Zeferino, clad in the gray uniform of an Imperial officer, lifts the blaster. _

_ Cassian watches in horror. _

_ “No!” _

_ The red light flies through the gray air, slamming into Nerezza’s chest. _

_ She falls. _

Cassian shakes his head, pulling away from the memories. They do no good now.

“Maybe Zeferino has changed,” Jyn says, so quietly Cassian thinks he almost imagined it. “He did save our lives, last year, and he didn’t have to do that--”

Cassian turns on her, grabbing her elbow and yanking her to a stop in the middle of the busy street.

“He didn’t have to kill our sister, either,” he hisses. “Saving our lives does not excuse a  _ lifetime _ of cruelty and wickedness. He is still an Imperial senator, he is still advancing the Empire’s work, and he is still authoring laws that could very well kill you and me anyway.”

“Cass,” Jyn whispers, and Cassian only hears her due to his close proximity. “People can change. Look at me, for example.”

“You changed yourself. You chose to join the Alliance, and you chose to fight with us.”

“So, maybe Zeferino--”

“At the end of the day, he is still the monster that killed the sister who raised me,” Cassian snaps. “You can’t ask me to forgive that.”

Even as he speaks, he remembers Zeferino’s parting words, from the last time he saw his brother, last year, when Zeferino saved Jyn from imminent execution.

_ “I hope, that one day, you will forgive me.” _

_ “For what?” _

_ “For all of it. Any of it.” _

Zeferino had once been only his big brother, had been someone who loved and cared for Cassian, someone Cassian had admired, and adored. But then Zeferino killed their sister.

Cassian can, perhaps, forgive some of Zeferino’s choices, as they led him to save Jyn on Coruscant. But the murder of Nerezza is something he can never forget.

Jyn pauses. “Maybe not… But you can hope for that. You can hope--”

“Rebellions are built on hope, Jyn. I am not.”

He is only single-mindedly devoted to the Rebellion, and whatever it does, and whatever it wants. His personal feelings and beliefs have never mattered. He’s sacrificed them a thousand times for the cause, for the Alliance, for the galaxy.

He sets off, and after a moment’s hesitation, Jyn follows him.

 

* * *

 

“Chirrut messaged,” Jyn says, looking at her transmitter. “He and Baze have made contact with a few of their Guardian friends. They’re headed to the Temple to meet with them, and hopefully find out what this weapons test is, and where it will be.”

“They’re having more success than we are,” Cassian mutters.

They’ve been on Jedha for a few hours, but none of the citizens of the Holy City seem to know about a weapons test. They do know plenty about the Empire being on the moon; the Empire has been coming and going for months, stripping kyber crystal from the city, creating a blockade of ships so the Jedhans cannot protest properly, or else lose their ability to survive. Because of this, the Jedhans are weary, and fearful; the Empire is not to be challenged on such a small, lonely moon.

They express concern over a weapons test, but no one seems particularly worried.

They have noticed that more Imperial troops have been leaving the city than entering it, and a handful of Jedhans extrapolate that they’re being taken to view the weapons test, but where the test is going to be conducted is unknown.

It’s just another problem.

Outer Rim territories face difficulties in challenging the Empire that are exclusive to the Outer Rim, where the systems are isolated, and often poor, in comparison to Core and Mid-Rim worlds. To fight the Empire out here is to stare down probable, and sometimes inevitable, death. Many of the people on these systems end up keeping their heads down, letting the Alliance take on the Empire from a safe distance.

Cassian can’t really blame them for this mindset.

The Empire is terrifying, and it’s only getting stronger.

He feels very tired, looking at these worn Jedhans.

“This isn’t working,” he murmurs, turning to Jyn, who stops to look at him. He hesitates, and goes for it:

“I think we need to find Saw Gerrera.”

“No,” Jyn says, automatically, her eyes lighting up with a kind of fury that a less braver man than Cassian would immediately run away from.

“Jyn, if anyone is going to know about Imperial movements, and a weapons test, it’s going to be Saw--”

“I don’t kriffing care if Saw Gerrera is the last hope for the kriffing galaxy,” Jyn snaps, and a passing woman shoots her a dark look for her profane language. “I am going  _ nowhere _ near Saw.”

“... Saw? Saw Gerrera?”

The new voice makes Cassian and Jyn freeze. Slowly, they turn their heads.

There’s a man standing at the mouth of the alley to their immediate left. He looks to be younger than Cassian, maybe a little older than Jyn, with warm brown skin, midnight black hair, and big brown eyes. He’s dressed in a dirty gray tunic that falls to his knees, with worn black boots. 

“You’re looking for Saw Gerrera?” he asks, speaking in Basic with an accent not unlike Jyn’s. The man takes a small step forward, impatiently shoving the goggles on his head further back.

_ “No,” _ Jyn says, at the same time as Cassian says, “Yes.”

The man hesitates, looking between the two of them.

Cassian sighs.

“Why do you ask?” he asks.

“I, um…” The man hesitates. “I’m looking for him. Sort of. I have a message I’m trying to deliver to him.”

“What’s the message?”

The man looks pained. “Sorry. I shouldn’t say.”

Cassian supposes this is fair.

He turns to Jyn.

“All signs point to Saw,” he says.

Jyn scowls.

“That’s rich, coming from you,” she snaps. “You don’t believe in fate, or  _ signs, _ you only believe in the Rebellion--”

“You’re with the Rebellion?”

Jyn’s mouth snaps closed, and she spins around to glare at the man.

“What’s it to you?” she hisses.

The man flushes.

“I’m just, uh.” he pauses. “Interested?”

Cassian looks at Jyn. “Good enough for me.”

And by that, he means,  _ If this man decides to betray us, you and I should be enough to take him down. _

Jyn glares back at him. “You  _ owe _ me for this.”

And by that, she means,  _ If we die on this moon, I will kill you. _

Cassian turns back to the man. “What’s your name?”

“Bodhi,” the man says, a smile lighting up his face, making him look even younger. Cassian  _ really _ does not want to have to kill this man. “Bodhi Rook.”

“I’m Joreth, and this is Liana,” Cassian says, nodding towards Jyn, who shrugs in greeting. She doesn’t dispute his decision to tell Bodhi fake names; he might not have done anything to merit distrust, but they don’t really trust him, either.

“Stellar,” Bodhi says. “How do we get to Saw Gerrera?”

Cassian looks at Jyn.

She groans.

“I doubt Saw is still based out of the building he was seven years ago,” Jyn says, looking around the street, the busy marketplace they’ve stopped near. “He’ll have moved ten times since then, that paranoid bastard.”

Bodhi looks a little startled at Jyn’s candid language, but doesn’t interrupt.

“Our best bet is the Temple,” Jyn decides. “He might still use it as a meetup place. Saw won’t be there, but maybe some of his people will be. They can point us in the right direction.”

Cassian nods. “Let’s go.”

At the least, he thinks, they can regroup with Chirrut and Baze.

Jyn stalks off, not bothering to wait for Cassian and Bodhi.

“Is she okay?” Bodhi asks, practically jogging to keep up with Cassian, wide brown eyes locked on Jyn’s stiff back.

“She’s fine,” Cassian mutters.

“She knows Saw Gerrera?”

“She wishes she didn’t.”

“Oh.” Bodhi considers this. “I’m… Sorry?”

Cassian can’t help but laugh. “Don’t tell  _ her _ that. She won’t appreciate it.”

“Why are you looking for Saw, then, if Liana doesn’t want to see him?”

“We are… looking for something,” Cassian says, and this is, basically, the truth. “We think Saw might be able to point us in the right direction.”

If Bodhi is curious about Cassian’s vagueness, he doesn’t call him out on it.

“You look familiar,” he says, instead. “Have we met before? Have you been on Jedha before?”

“Um, no,” Cassian replies, frowning now, as he cannot place Bodhi in any memory or recollection, and he wonders if Bodhi will remember some unknown meeting with Cassian, and realize he’s lying about his name. “I don’t think so.”

“Huh,” Bodhi says. “I grew up on Jedha, so. ‘S why I thought you might have been here before.”

“It must be nice to live where you grew up,” Cassian murmurs, thinking longingly of Fest, a planet he has not been on in almost ten years.

Bodhi’s brown skin flushes slightly.

“I, uh, don’t live here,” Bodhi says. “I would like to, but I…”

He trails off, looking away.

Cassian doesn’t think Bodhi has lied to him.

But he does think Bodhi is hiding quite a big truth.

They walk in silence, with Cassian trying to puzzle out what it could be.

 

* * *

 

Chirrut and Baze are loitering outside the Temple when they get there.

Both men look content, leaning lazily on the stairs, even as harried and anxious Jedhans pass them, shooting them dark looks for their apparent relaxation. Chirrut is twirling his lightbow in his hands, while Baze remains still, partially hidden in shadow.

“You’ve brought a friend,” Chirrut notes.

Bodhi stares, taking in Chirrut’s sightless eyes. “How did he--”

“Don’t ask,” Cassian advises, as Chirrut and Baze get to their feet, and approach them.

“What is it, little star?” Baze asks, studying Jyn.

Whereas Chirrut seems to glean his understanding of others from extrasensory capabilities, Baze seems to be able to do so through small visual cues, including the tense line between Jyn’s eyes, and the stiff way she holds herself.

“We’re going to find Saw,” she says.

Chirrut and Baze visibly startle at these words.

“Jyn,” Chirrut breathes, but she shakes her head.

“It is what it is,” she says, voice cold, and Cassian aches, because he is  _ making her this way. _ “Saw is our best chance. So. We’ll find him.” She looks up at the Temple, taking in the cracks and holes that make up most of its walls, and she stares. “What happened here?”

“The Empire,” Baze murmurs, following her gaze. “There is very little left.”

“The kyber?” Jyn asks.

At Cassian’s side, Bodhi freezes. Cassian looks at him, frowning, but the other man’s eyes are downcast, focusing on the dusty ground.

“Bodhi,” Cassian says, and the harshness in his voice catches the others’ attention.

Bodhi looks up at him, and his eyes are glassy, and pained, and this confirms it for Cassian.

“What is the Empire doing with the kyber crystal, Bodhi?”

The rest of the team freezes.

It is suddenly very quiet.

Bodhi hesitates.

Jyn raises her blaster, pointing it at Bodhi’s chest. Her earlier glare has turned into full-blown loathing, and Bodhi practically quakes under it.

“You’re with the Empire,” she snarls.

“I was!” Bodhi exclaims, lifting his arms in a universal gesture of surrender. “I was a shuttle pilot. But I defected.  _ I defected, _ okay?”

“You didn’t answer my question,” Cassian snaps.

“It’s a weapon,” Bodhi says, and even in the quiet, his voice is barely audible. Still, he meets Cassian’s eyes as he speaks. “I don’t… I don’t know specifics. But that’s what the kyber is for. The weapon.”

“Where is the weapon?”

“I would fly the kyber from Jedha to Eadu, but I don’t know where it goes after that.”

_ Eadu, _ Cassian thinks. He’s heard of it, but has never been there. He knows very little about it, and isn’t even sure it’s inhabited.

The perfect place, to hide a weapon.

“What do you know about a weapons test?” Cassian demands.

Bodhi frowns. “A… A test? Nothing, I don’t--”

“Don’t lie,” Jyn growls.

“I’m not!”

Cassian seizes Bodhi by the front of his tunic, and shoves him bodily against the dilapidated wall of the Temple. The structure trembles with the impact, and Bodhi gasps, scrabbling for Cassian’s hands. But Cassian is a soldier with twenty years of experience, and he has a height advantage, and Bodhi gets nowhere. Cassian presses his forearm against Bodhi’s throat.

“Why are you on Jedha, Bodhi Rook?”

“I have a message to be delivered to  _ Saw Gerrera--” _

“From the Empire? Who is the message from?”

“Galen Erso!”

Cassian freezes.

Bodhi is choking, his face turning red, and so Cassian takes a step back, letting Bodhi drop to the street.

“You have a message from Galen Erso?”

The question comes from Jyn. Cassian turns around, and sees that she’s staring at Bodhi, and that her shoulders are somewhat hunched, and her eyes are very wide, and very shocked. She steps forward, stepping past Cassian to reach Bodhi, and she drops into a crouch in front of him, pulling him upright, leaning him gingerly against the wall.

“What’s the message?” she demands.

“I… I don’t,” Bodhi gasps, frowning in confusion at her. “It’s--”

But whatever Bodhi had been planning to say is lost due to a sudden movement by Chirrut.

The warrior stands, back straight and head turned up, hands gripping his lightbow, the end of which is pressed forcefully to the street. Baze mirrors this movement, hurriedly standing, glancing at Chirrut, and down the street, and back.

Cassian suddenly realizes how very quiet it is.

Unnaturally quiet.

No one is in sight.

And considering how crowded and loud the Holy City has been, this is very odd indeed.

“I have a bad feeling about this,” Bodhi murmurs, unnecessarily.

Cassian looks down the street, following Chirrut’s gaze, when he is roughly tackled to the ground.

It’s Jyn who has tackled Cassian, thrown herself at his legs, knocking him off his feet, sending him sprawling in the dirt, Jyn partially on top of him. Streams of red blaster light shoot over them, where his chest and head had been moments before.

_ “Move,” _ Jyn growls in his ear, and he needs no telling twice.

A squad of stormtroopers is running down the street, and they are being chased by figures carrying grenades and blasters, their faces obscured. Every now and then, a stormtrooper turns and engages with a fighter directly, and the fight is quick, and violent, and ends with one body lying in the street like trash. Explosions are rocking the whole block, and when Cassian looks up, he sees other masked figures tossing grenades from the rooftops, seemingly uncaring if they hit stormtrooper or infrastructure.

Cassian scrambles up, seizing Bodhi by the shoulders, and yanks the man into a small crevice in between buildings. Jyn slides in after them, and it’s a tight fit, Bodhi shoved in the space behind them, staring in shock at the battle unfolding before their eyes.

“Who--”

“The Partisans,” Jyn snaps. “Guess we’ve found Saw’s people after all.”

“And an entire Imperial squadron,” Cassian snarls.

“Today is  _ not _ our day.”

Jyn retrieves her truncheon from the holster on her leg, and then digs into a jacket pocket, procuring a small blaster, which she shoves at Bodhi. “Know how to use this?”

Bodhi takes it. “I, uh… Yes, they teach us, but--”

“Good. Point and shoot. And if you kill one of my team, I  _ will _ kill you, message from Galen Erso be damned. Got it?”

“Yeah, I--”

“Stay here,” Cassian says, and without giving Bodhi a chance to reply, he and Jyn throw themselves into the street.

A second squad of stormtroopers has converged on the block, but their mechanical chatter is lost in the sheer onslaught of the battle. Fires have broken out in abandoned vendor stalls, and a couple of them contain flammable materials, which are sending plumes of acrid smoke into the sky. Imperial sirens start to go off, cutting through the air like knives.

A little further down the street is Chirrut, leaping and twisting through the air, slamming stormtroopers to the ground with his lightbow, moving with impunity and enthusiasm. Baze is nearby, as always, moving with less grace but with no less ferocity, shooting stormtroopers with his repeating cannon, sending them flying.

Jyn has a small, pleased smile on her face, and Cassian knows it’s because she savors fighting hand-to-hand with Imperials more than just about anything else. She slams her truncheon into legs and heads, throwing an elbow into a neck or gut, and she’ll definitely have bruises tomorrow, but she will declare it all to be worth it.

Where Jyn fights with her fists and fury, Cassian is more calm and focused. He’s just as deadly as her, maybe more so, as it’s easier for him to actually be able to kill someone with his bare hands than it is for Jyn, and he can move quickly when he needs to, such as during a brawl in a dirty street on Jedha.

They complement each other; they always have.

Bodhi has left the crevice, somewhat, shuffling out awkwardly, back pressed to the stone, and Bodhi had said he was a shuttle pilot, and Cassian realizes this may very well be his first battle. He turns towards Bodhi, ready to send him back to relative safety, but Bodhi lifts the blaster and shoots a stormtrooper who had been aiming for Chirrut.

Chirrut would have almost definitely killed the stormtrooper before he could have killed Chirrut, but the intention is still clear.

Bodhi is on their side.

They force the Imperials further down the street, and an Imperial assault tank comes rumbling up from somewhere else in the city, and everyone splits up, scrambling for cover. Cassian ends up hiding behind heavy stone stairs with Baze, who uses the pause to check his ammunition.

“You okay?” Cassian asks, practically yelling to be heard over the battle.

“Never better,” Baze grunts, and flashes Cassian a nearly startlingly bright grin, and Cassian can’t help but laugh.

A rabid fight against Imperials, on Baze’s homeworld? He likely never has been better.

Cassian follows Baze out, but is distracted from continuing on by Bodhi, who seizes Cassian’s wrist and yanks him back into the dirt.

“What--”

“Do you hear that?”

Bodhi’s ear is pressed to the dry dirt of the street, and Cassian mirrors him.

The earth is shaking, trembling with the assault happening on it, but Cassian can hear something odd: rhythmic steps. Metallic. Something heavy.

_ Kriff, _ he thinks.

He grabs his transmitter from his pocket.

“There’s a Walker approaching,” he yells.

Rogue One are not the only ones who have heard him. Some of Saw’s Partisans have also heard his warning, and they move accordingly, setting up blockades and impromptu trenches, doing their best to make themselves small and less noticeable.

Bodhi follows Cassian back behind the stairs, and his eyes are wide, and he fumbles for his tunic, the end of which has been torn and is dragging in the dirt, and when he goes to pull it off, Cassian catches a familiar black insignia on his shoulder--

“Don’t,” Cassian advises, catching Bodhi’s arm before he can pull the tunic off.

“Why?”

“You’ve got the Imperial insignia on your shoulder. The Partisans won’t hesitate to kill you for that.”

Bodhi nods, but a flash of defiance also shoots through his eyes. “You nearly did, too.”

“But we  _ didn’t.” _

“Yeah, you’re kind like that.”

Cassian doesn’t bother to hide his grin.

That timid, nervous man who had approached him and Jyn in the alley, fumbling for information on Saw Gerrera? Cassian sees now that it was a front, for this defecting Imperial pilot, who has thrown himself fully into a dangerous street skirmish.

If he keeps going like this, Cassian might grow to even  _ like _ Bodhi Rook.

The Imperial Walker finally reaches them, but it proves to be no match for the Partisans’ grenades, or Baze’s cannon. It trembles, smoke spilling out of its ventilation windows, and then it’s finally brought down to a chorus of cheers from the assembled fighters around it.

The stormtroopers are quickly becoming overwhelmed by their opponents, and from the radio of the stormtrooper he’s just killed, Cassian hears the Imperial code for retreat crackle through.

He looks up, and watches the remaining troops follow the order, running down the street.

There is no time to breathe, no time to celebrate, because Cassian turns his head, and spots Bodhi, his tunic entirely ruined by the fight, the Imperial insignia on his arm visible for all to see, and watches as a Partisan behind him notices this too.

The Partisan lifts his blaster.

Cassian doesn’t hesitate.

He shoots the Partisan before he can shoot Bodhi.

The Partisans turn on Cassian, instantly, as he expected, and Cassian drops his blaster and lifts his arms, shaking his head.

“We’re not with the Empire,” he calls, though he thinks this should be obvious by now, based on how they’ve helped the Partisans drive two squadrons of stormtroopers away.

“Yet you kill one of our own?”

The question comes from the apparent leader of the Partisans, whose face is obscured.

“He was going to kill one of mine,” Cassian says, eyes sliding past the man and towards Jyn, giving her a small nod.

She nods back, and steps to Bodhi’s side. Her posture looks relaxed, but she has a blaster in one hand and a knife in the other, and her chin is raised, challenging anyone to give her an excuse to use either.

Chirrut and Baze follow her example, stepping close to Bodhi, mirroring Jyn’s stance.

Bodhi stares around at them, and he is clearly very surprised, and touched, at this solidarity.

“An Imperial,” the Partisan leader scoffs.

“A friend,” Cassian challenges. “With a mutual interest in finding Saw Gerrera.”

The words don’t work as well as he’d hoped them to, as the Partisans only seem to grow more agitated. Two step up behind Cassian, forcing him to his knees, and he feels a blaster press into the back of his head.

“So the Imperial is here to  _ kill Saw _ , then,” the Partisan leader snarls. “Do you have the same goal?”

“He carries a message from Galen Erso.”

It’s Jyn’s voice, and she’s taken a single step away from Bodhi and towards Cassian and the Partisans. Her hand is tight around her blaster, and she ignores Cassian’s warning gaze, focusing instead on the Partisan leader who has whipped around to stare at her.

“The  _ Imperial,” _ Jyn spits, her tone indicating she disagrees with this characterization of Bodhi. “He carries a message from Galen Erso, an old and trusted friend of Saw Gerrera.”

While most of the assembled Partisans have no reaction to the name  _ Galen Erso, _ the Partisan leader straightens, giving Jyn his full attention.

“If the Imperial carries what he claims to, then he has value,” the Partisan says, turning to study Bodhi with new interest. “But the rest of you?”

“You’ll have to get through the four of us before you get to him,” Cassian says, and receives a punch to the face for the comment.

“I think that won’t be a problem. We will take the Imperial, and--”

“You need us,” Jyn interjects.

Cassian sighs.

He wishes they could have reached Saw without forcing Jyn to play this card.

“And why is that?” the Partisan leader asks.

“Because I’m not going anywhere without my team,” Jyn says. “And neither is Bodhi. And Saw will want to see the both of us.”

“The Imperial, sure. But why  _ you?” _

Jyn swallows, but raises her chin.

“Because I’m the daughter of Galen Erso,” Jyn says.

Bodhi openly gawks at Jyn, stunned by the revelation.

She waits until the Partisan leader has nodded, and the blaster has been removed from the back of Cassian’s head, and then she drops her own weapons, lifting her arms in a clear gesture of surrender. Bodhi automatically follows her lead, while Chirrut does so with a coy smile, and Baze with something akin to a grimace.

Being blindfolded and herded in a single-file line is not the most optimal way to get to Saw Gerrera, not the neatest way to try to find out more about a weapons test on Jedha, but it is still a step in what Cassian can only hope is the right direction.

With Bodhi Rook in tow, Rogue One leaves the Holy City of Jedha for the last time.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Zeferino's role in Nerezza's death is left ambiguous in the Nonsense. He could have killed her; but it might not have been him. This universe makes it explicit: Zeferino killed Nerezza.
> 
> [This helps explain Cassian's furious response to Zeferino mentioning Nerezza in BLOOD BROTHERS. they both know what he did to her. Zeferino's comment about Nerezza includes how Jyn reminds him of her; Cassian would see this as a clear threat.]
> 
> [If you're like, "Why is Zeferino an Imperial officer in that flashback scene when he is a senator in this universe": i'll cover that later!]
> 
> I still don't really understand why Cassian wears a giant parka on Jedha. my son is from frigid Fest. Jedha might be a cold desert moon, but that's practically temperate to him.
> 
> The Jedhans being unconcerned about troops leaving: no one knew a planet killer is possible. The weapons test probably seems scary, but nothing annihilating.
> 
> Bodhi Rook is not tortured by a weird tentacle monster in this story.


	4. Rising Action

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "Planet killer."

They walk for hours.

Eventually, the light of the sun fades, and the terrain changes, and though Cassian still cannot see with the hood over his head, he can tell the air has changed, become mustier and older, and he realizes that they are now inside something. A cavern, perhaps.

He’s forced up stairs, and he can recognize Chirrut’s contented humming, Baze’s occasional grunt, the sound of Jyn’s scarf brushing against a rock wall, and the jagged breathing of Bodhi Rook. Wherever they are, wherever they’re being herded; they’re going together. This is really all he can hope for, at this point.

He’s abruptly stopped, and the hood is yanked off his head with no kindness.

He blinks.

They are in some sort of cave; a cavern, maybe, or a series of connected caves, going by the tunnels branching out in all directions. Cassian turns his head, spotting alcoves littered with weapons and ammunition, rations and medical supplies. And surrounding him on all sides are people, people dressed in dark clothes, with messy hair and black paint around their eyes.

He’s struck by how they all seem to resemble Jyn, though many of them don’t actually  _ look _ a thing like her.

But the truth of it remains: these are Jyn’s people.

“Where’s Saw?” Jyn demands, and he looks to his left, finding her on the other side of Chirrut.

“It’s nice to see you too, Jyn,” says a woman. She’s taller than Cassian, with pale white skin and a completely hairless scalp, a ring dangling from her nose. She looks far more amused than Cassian thinks she ought to be, sitting on a table, legs carelessly spread.

Jyn rolls her eyes. “Forgive me if I’m not kriffing delighted to see you, Ciara.”

“We thought you were dead.”

“I liked to think you were.”

“Ouch,” Ciara says, but her smile doesn’t fade. She jerks her chin at the rest of Rogue One. “Do you have enough men in your life?”

Chirrut actually laughs at that.

“My team,” Jyn says, voice firm. “My family.”

“Family? They don’t look like much.”

“They’re more my family than any of you ever were,” Jyn snarls.

Ciara tuts. “Keep that up and I’ll decide it might be best if Saw doesn’t see you after all.”

Jyn shuts up.

Ciara hops to her feet, surveying the group assembled before her.

“A Guardian, huh,” she muses, studying Chirrut. “You’re a dying kind.”

“Death is nothing to fear,” Chirrut says, cheerfully, and Ciara blinks.

She looks at Baze next.

“And his… Protector?” She guesses, eyeing the way Baze tries to stand as close to Chirrut as possible. “Lover? Both?”

Baze doesn’t so much as blink.

“I’d hate to separate lovers,” Ciara murmurs, stepping past them, stopping in front of Bodhi. “An Imperial. Strange bedfellows, Jyn Erso.”

“I have a message from Galen--”

“Yes, I’ve heard,” Ciara snaps, and there is a flash of irritation in her dark eyes, and Bodhi pauses, recognizing the warning in her tone. “You’ve stamped your ticket to Saw, no worries. He’ll be very keen to hear your message, assuming you even  _ have _ one. Saw doesn’t think much of Imperials; you’re already treading on very thin ice, Imp.”

“I  _ defected,” _ Bodhi insists, returning Ciara’s frosty tone with a red hot one of his own.

Ciara smirks. “You say that like it should mean something.”

_ Once an Imperial, always an Imperial. _

Jyn’s dislike of this belief of Cassian’s suddenly takes on a whole new light.

He wonders how else he might remind her of Saw Gerrera, and the Partisans, the family she lost.

“And  _ you,” _ Ciara says, stepping closer to Cassian than he’s strictly comfortable with most people standing near him. “The one who killed one of my people. You’ve got Alliance all over you. It’s awfully brave of you to come here; Saw doesn’t think much of the Alliance, either. So maybe you’re just stupid.”

“I’ve done stupider things,” Cassian says.

“Outer Rim accent,” Ciara notes. “Which godforsaken pit did you crawl out of?”

“Why do you care?”

“Saw likes to know a thing or two about his guests.”

“His name is Cassian,” Jyn calls. “And that’s Bodhi, Baze, and Chirrut. And that’s all  _ Saw _ needs to know about them.”

Ciara looks away from Cassian, turning back to Jyn.

She meanders over to the shorter woman, peering down at her.

“You still look like us,” she murmurs, reaching out and brushing Jyn’s bangs out of her eyes.

Jyn snatches Ciara’s wrist, causing a couple Partisans to move forward, until Ciara raises her free fist, and they stop.

“I’m uninterested in talking about me,” Jyn says. “You know why I’m here. Bodhi has a message from my father he’s been tasked to deliver to Saw. And considering my father entrusted me to Saw, and that Saw then abandoned me, I think I deserve to hear that message. Don’t you?”

A predatory grin grows over Ciara’s face.

“I’ve missed you,” she says, practically purrs it. “You’ve always made a compelling argument.” To the man at her elbow, she says, “Bring the Imp. And the stupid one.”

Cassian doesn’t really care for being called  _ the stupid one,  _ but he’ll allow it, if it gets him through the door.

“Why him?” Jyn asks, more confused than concerned.

“You’ve always had that lovely kyber crystal necklace, but I see you’ve added a pretty locket to your neck,” Ciara says. “And, in a wild coincidence, the man on the end there has a locket that matches it.”

Cassian’s marriage pendant had gotten thrown out from under his shirt at some point during the firefight with the stormtroopers, and he had not had an opportunity to hide it away again. He does not react to Ciara’s neutral tone, and Jyn doesn’t look at him either. 

Ciara’s grin is wide, and deeply amused. “Seems like Saw should meet him.”

“Saw should meet who?”

Every Partisan in the room straightens.

An old man has come hobbling down some stairs at the back of the room. He’s fairly tall, with lined black skin, unruly gray hair, and broad shoulders. His clothes are worn and battle-hardened, and he’s very obviously missing the bottom half of one leg, using a long staff for support.

But the man’s eyes are sharp and clear, as he looks around the room.

This is not a man to underestimate.

“Jyn,” Saw Gerrera breathes, and a wide grin breaks out over his face, and it is a shocking thing to see. “My girl. You’re  _ here.” _

“Saw,” Jyn says, and she swallows, fighting the tremble in her jaw.

Cassian cannot go to her side, though he wishes he could.

He’s distracted for the moment by Bodhi, leaning in close to him.

“She’s really Galen Erso’s daughter?”

Cassian can’t really seem the harm in confirming this now, not when so many, including Jyn, have stated it as fact. “Yes.”

“Galen talked about her, but--”

“He  _ did?” _

It is only his two decades of living and working in warzones that prevent Cassian’s exclamation from being louder than a hiss. As it is, several pairs of eyes turn to glare at him, before returning to the odd reunion taking up much of the room’s focus.

“A little,” Bodhi whispers. “We didn’t… Well. It’s complicated, but I knew he had a daughter. On base on Eadu, he’d tell me about her.” He hesitates, and then adds, “The message isn’t for Saw Gerrera. It’s for Jyn Erso.”

Cassian stares.

“Why the hell didn’t you say that?”

“You said her name was  _ Liana,” _ Bodhi hisses. “And Galen told me to get the message to Saw Gerrera, because Saw Gerrera could get it to Jyn. He doesn’t know where she is, only where Saw is. He told me to find Saw, and give him the message, so it could get to Jyn.”

Jyn is too far away for her to hear Bodhi’s soft words, and Cassian deliberates yelling it all at her.

Because, this. This changes  _ everything. _

_ “Additionally, we’d like you to gather whatever you can on what Galen Erso is doing.” _

_ “Find out where he is.” _

_ “You find him, you kill him.” _

_ Eadu, _ Cassian thinks.

Galen Erso is on Eadu.

His thoughts come to a halt when Saw Gerrera approaches him and Bodhi.

“Imperial scum,” he says, glaring Bodhi down.

Bodhi sighs. “For the last time, I  _ defected.” _

There is a murmur throughout the room at Bodhi’s defiance, and Saw’s eyes glitter dangerously.

“Your message from Galen is your only worth,” he says, an explanation and a threat all in one. “Where is it?”

Bodhi hesitates, glancing at Cassian, who nods. Saw tracks this exchange.

Bodhi drops down, shoving the trouser on his left leg up a bit, and reaching into his boot. After a moment of scuffling, he stands, a data stick clenched in his fist.

He offers it to Saw.

“It’s for Jyn,” Bodhi says, and Cassian sees Jyn’s mouth drop in surprise. “Galen recorded the message for Jyn. He thought you would be able to find her, and pass it on to her.”

Saw looks at her.

“We will listen to it together,” he says.

Jyn looks like she wants to fight this, but evidently decides it is not an argument she is liable to win, and that her desperation to hear a message from her estranged father is worth stomaching Saw’s presence. She nods.

“Who are you?”

The question comes from Saw, who is eyeing Cassian with a similar distaste as he had Bodhi.

“His name is Cassian, and he’s Alliance,” Ciara says.

“That much is… obvious,” Saw murmurs, looking Cassian up and down. “His jacket has a suicide pill stitched into the shoulder. Only the most devoted and fearless Alliance spies carry such lethal things.”

Saw almost sounds impressed, like this fact actually  _ warms  _ him to Cassian. 

Cassian isn’t convinced this is a good thing.

“And his jacket is Correllian-cut; I have seen Alliance soldiers wearing similar jackets. Do you come from the Corellian Resistance, Cassian?”

“You could say that,” Cassian says, through gritted teeth.

He was not born into the Corellian Resistance, but he spent the immediate years before the creation of the Alliance with that group.

“Your pendant,” Saw notes. “It is a marriage pendant, is it not?”

Cassian expects Saw already knows the answer, and so he says nothing.

“A tradition among several Outer Rim systems,” Saw says. He narrows his eyes. “Going by your brown skin and dark hair, and your thick accent… Fest?”

Jyn has told Cassian enough of Saw, and his wayward but broad travels, that Cassian knows he shouldn’t really be surprised at Saw sussing out his homeworld based off so little information. And Fest has cultivated a reputation as a planet of rebels. The Fest Rebellion was one of the first on the scene, and has become a kind of role model for other Outer Rim planets looking to establish such organizations. Even if Saw Gerrera shuns the Alliance; he likely keeps tabs on smaller Rebellion groups.

“My father founded the Fest Rebellion,” Cassian says. “I joined it when I was a child.”

Saw studies him, eyes darting around Cassian’s face, and Cassian stares back, refusing to be intimidated.

This is the man who abandoned Jyn.

Whatever Cassian is,  _ whoever _ Cassian is; he doesn’t abandon people he loves. He refuses to leave them behind. 

This is, perhaps, the only value Cassian has ever refused to compromise, even for the Rebellion.

It was what inspired him to go back for Jyn’s body on Coruscant, when he believed her to be dead; his determination to refuse to leave her on an Imperial-controlled world, the  _ homeworld _ of the Empire.

It’s the kindest act of love he’s ever performed, he thinks. The most true.

The closest he’s ever come to putting Jyn before everything else.

He stands before Saw Gerrera, and for the first time, he fully feels the weight of what this means.

Because Jyn would put him before everything else; always. She has never spelled it out, but she’s said it every time she’s told Cassian that she loves him, because Jyn is someone who has been abandoned by her family, by people who claimed to love her, time and time again. And that pain is not something she would wish on anyone; especially those she herself loves.

Cassian looks at Jyn now, and she visibly startles at the guilt in his face.

_ “Find out where he is.” _

_ “If you find him, you kill him.” _

_ I’m going to be the first person you love who you choose to leave, _ Cassian thinks,  _ Because I’m going to kill your father, and that is something you won’t be able to forgive. _

Because Zeferino killed Nerezza, the older sister who raised Cassian after their parents died, and it is an act Cassian will never forgive Zeferino for.

Jyn might be a more forgiving person than he is--might believe Zeferino can repent, might believe her Imperialist father can be saved--but he does not believe she will be able to forgive the cold-blooded murder of her father by her husband. And Cassian cannot blame her for this.

_ “You are not Ezza, Cassi. And you are not me. You’re better. You’re  _ good.  _ Remember that.” _

Zeferino’s voice fades away as Saw speaks.

“Come, Jyn,” he says. “Let us listen to this message from your father.”

Cassian moves to object, to insist he needs to go with them, but he stops at the look Jyn sends his way. Her eyes are wide, but determined, and she jerks her head towards Chirrut and Baze, and it is a signal Cassian can easily translate.

_ Stay with them. Do not let anyone hurt them. _

Jyn can take care of herself, especially among the Partisans.

Cassian doesn’t like it, but he’ll follow her lead.

This is her terrain.

He and Bodhi are herded into a cell with Chirrut and Baze, with Chirrut being the last to enter, and turning to call a fond farewell to Jyn’s retreating back:

“Stay safe! Make good choices!”

 

* * *

 

Chirrut and Baze make themselves at home.

Cassian leans against the wall and eyes them, taking in Chirrut’s contented perch on the dirt floor of the cell, his soft smile, even as he prays and chants.

“I am one with the force, and the force is with me, I am one with the force, and the force is with me…”

Baze kicks an errant stone back and forth between his boots, occasionally sending a look Chirrut’s way. Cassian suspects Baze is growing annoyed with Chirrut’s chanting, but he does not move to interrupt or demand silence; not yet, anyway.

Chirrut suddenly pauses, and turns to Bodhi.

“I am sorry, we have not been properly introduced,” he says. “I am Chirrut, and this is Baze.”

Baze grunts an approximation of a greeting.

“Bodhi Rook,” Bodhi murmurs, and Chirrut nods, and returns to his chanting.

Bodhi’s eyes jump from face to face, and Cassian waits for him to break.

He eventually does.

“So, you’re… you’re with the Alliance.”

“The Captain is more Alliance than we are,” Baze grunts, and this is true, more or less. “He recruited us.”

“Jyn recruited you,” Cassian says. “I just happened to be there.”

Chirrut smiles.

“You’re a team?” Bodhi checks.

“Rogue One,” Chirrut confirms.

“Rogue…?”

Cassian sighs.

“Alliance Command was… Less than thrilled with us,” he murmurs. “We aren’t the typical team. We have different specialties and styles. I was a spy in Intelligence, Jyn was a street rebel with a moral compass pointed to her own beliefs, and Chirrut and Baze were former Guardians looking for potential Guardians to recruit. Jyn and I encountered them on Tatooine.”

“There was a strong force signature there,” Chirrut insists.

Baze snorts. “So you say.”

“Jyn met Chirrut and Baze when she was younger, when Saw was scoping out Jedha for a potential base,” Cassian continues. “When we ran into them again, she asked if they’d come with us, to work for the Alliance, which was a very new thing at the time, and desperate for recruits.”

“We got a little sidetracked,” Chirrut says.

“We stay for Jyn,” Baze says, and this is a less kind way to put it but probably a truer one.

Chirrut and Baze like Cassian, and he likes them, but Jyn is really the glue keeping them together.

“I resigned from my position in Intelligence,” Cassian says. “And petitioned Alliance Command for permission to form a new team with Jyn, Chirrut, and Baze.”

“And Kay,” Chirrut interjects.

“Who’s Kay?” Bodhi asks.

“K-2SO,” Baze replies. “A reprogrammed Imperial droid.”

Baze has long had a strange friendship with K-2SO. By all accounts, Baze should find K-2SO’s incessant chatter to be irritating, and Cassian had believed Baze illustrated this by rarely interacting with the droid; until one day, when Jyn reported seeing Baze  _ laughing _ at something K-2SO had said, with the two of them repairing blasters in a corner on base.

Cassian is reminded that K-2SO is (ostensibly) still waiting in the ship outside the Holy City. While Bodhi asks Baze about K-2SO, Cassian reaches into his jacket, fingers catching on the concealed pocket he’d stitched in the coat himself, and feels the outline of the comlink.

There are too many Partisans lingering near them for him to safely alert K-2SO to the change in plans, but maybe later.

Cassian doesn’t particularly like being locked up like this, but he knows they’re all treading on very thin ice with the Partisans, and any wrong move could lead to quick deaths. And besides; they can easily break out when the time comes.

It is the kind of thing Rogue One has had to do before. Once or twice.

He turns back to the conversation.

“... They had to call us something,” Chirrut says. “We were an odd group, prone to running missions in… unorthodox ways. Occasionally unsanctioned.”

Baze snorts.

“And so  _ Rogue One _ was named,” Chirrut finishes.

“Rogue One,” Bodhi repeats. He smiles. “I like it.”

“We’re always interested in adding members.”

Bodhi blinks. “Yeah?”

“You’d fit in well,” Chirrut says. “K-2SO will be glad to not be entirely surrounded by married couples; I hear such a thing can be exhausting.”

Bodhi turns to stare at Cassian.

“You’re married to Jyn?”

Cassian thinks of how he used to be able to go  _ months _ without anyone asking him about his marital status, and how it’s been brought up multiple times in just the past week. He sighs.

“For about three years now,” he mutters.

“I married them,” Chirrut interjects, though no one has asked. “On Ossus. It was a quicker ceremony than I would have liked it to have been--” (Baze rolls his eyes, in a fond sort of way) “--But everyone was eager to get the proper paperwork filed. Do you remember it, Captain?”

“She had flowers in her hair,” Cassian murmurs.

The sun was out, and she had blue flowers in her hair, and she was smiling.

It didn’t matter that they were both in their same old dirty clothes, that they were fresh off a gruelling mission, that Jyn had a bruise on her jaw and Cassian’s knuckles were skinned raw, that none of them had eaten a warm meal in  _ weeks, _ that K-2SO was worried about having to steal a ship to get back to base.

She was radiant, and they were so happy.

Part of the reason for getting married was definitely to get Jyn legitimate scandocs with a surname that was not her father’s, should the need ever arise, but Cassian likes to think they married primarily because they wanted to. He hadn’t been sure Jyn felt similarly about this until last year, when Zeferino saved her.

_ “I was wondering, then; why did you marry my brother?” _

_ “Because I wanted to.” _

_ “Do you love him?” _

_ “Yes.” _

_ “What he did for you today, would you do the same? If he was already dead, would you go back for his body?” _

_ “I would.” _

It was a statement of devotion that had stunned Cassian.

He still isn’t sure what to do with it, what to make of Jyn.

He thinks she finds him bewildering, and sometimes he suspects he finds her just as strange.

They’re both flying pretty blind here, trying to navigate a relationship amidst chaos and loss and duty. They share a core belief that guides them--freeing the galaxy and destroying the Empire--but they differ on the best way to get there.

Cassian: through any means necessary, no matter the cost.

Jyn: by doing what is the right thing, not the correct thing.

Cassian stands in a cell on Jedha, and sees how stark this difference is, clearly.

_ “That’s…” He has to look away, a difficult thing to do, what with Jyn being so close. “That’s the life we live, Jyn. We’re… You and me, we’ve been in this our entire lives. We’ve lost our families, our homes, and… The cause, the Alliance? This is all we have.” _

_ Jyn doesn’t look surprised at any of this. _

_ “Do you never wish we could have more?” she asks. _

Of course he does.

He’s just never thought it was  _ possible. _

_ But what if it is? _

He jumps when a hand brushes his own.

It’s Chirrut, of course, and he’s peering up at Cassian with a painfully sad look on his face.

“You still have time, Cassian Andor,” he murmurs.

Cassian stares.

On the other side of the cell, Bodhi speaks: “Andor?”

Bodhi’s eyes are wide, and stunned. He looks the same as he had when he’d realized Jyn was Galen Erso’s daughter.

Cassian opens his mouth to ask, but is prevented from doing so when the earth begins to shake.

It’s a violent, sporadic shudder, causing the entire cave system to quake and tremble, and Cassian stares around the space in bewilderment; Jedha is not known for earthquakes. The Partisans across the room clearly agree, going by their reactions, which range from confusion to fear.

“What’s that?” Bodhi asks, and he’s definitely on the side of fearful.

“I was hoping you could tell me,” Cassian murmurs, because Bodhi had said he grew up on Jedha, and if he has no explanation for this shaking; then it isn’t natural.

Cassian drops to one knee, tugging the lock-pick kit out from his boot. Baze moves into position by the door, studying the movements of the Partisans outside, and when he turns and gives Cassian a nod, Cassian dives forward, extending an arm through the cell door, and working the lock-pick.

The cell door’s lock fizzes away a couple moments later, and Baze tugs the door open.

They spill out into the room, which the Partisans have vacated, and Baze and Chirrut make a beeline for their things. Bodhi stares at the ceiling, taking in the way dust and bits of rock are falling, while Cassian yanks his comlink from his pocket.

“Kay? Kay, are you there?”

“Yes, Cassian,” K-2SO replies, and Cassian has never been more glad to hear the droid’s voice.

“Can you get a lock on my location?”

“Yes, Cassian. But I should tell you, there’s a problem on the horizon.”

“What?”

“There  _ is no _ horizon.”

Cassian cannot comprehend this.

Luckily, he doesn’t have time to parse through K-2SO’s ambiguity.

“Pick us up,” he snaps, and then he grabs his blaster, and turns to the others.

“Get him out,” Cassian says, gesturing to Bodhi. “We’ll meet you outside.”

Baze gives a feeble little salute, and Cassian turns, and begins to run.

“Where are you going?” Bodhi yells.

“To get Jyn!”

 

* * *

 

The shaking doesn’t let up.

Cassian shoves past fleeing Partisans, listening to their orders and yells, but their panic is clear, and so none of them move to stop him. He is very close to joining them in full-blown panic; whatever is happening out there is clearly nothing good.

_ The weapons test? _

He can’t fathom what weapon could create this kind of chaos, that could move the earth so violently, and for so long.

The shaking  _ has not stopped. _

“Jyn!” he yells, running through the cave halls, fighting to keep his balance as the caverns rumble and roll.  _ “Jyn!” _

He has to find her.

He isn’t leaving without her.

He reaches the top of a short flight of rock stairs, emerging into a more wide open room, filled with cobbled together bits of technology and a hint of decoration. Saw Gerrera stands in the room, staring down at a figure hunched on the floor.

Cassian would recognize her anywhere.

He points his blaster at Saw Gerrera.

“Get back,” Cassian snarls.

Saw Gerrera, a wise man, does not need telling twice. He takes a quick step back, and Cassian charges forward, dropping to his knees next to Jyn. He presses his free hand to her back.

“Jyn? Jyn, can you hear me?”

“Cass,” Jyn whispers, and her eyes are shiny with tears, her face wet with them, her shoulders quaking with sobs, and  _ what the hell. _

He glares up at Saw. “What the hell did you do to her?”

Saw only shakes his head, his expression very stunned.

If it didn’t feel like the world was literally ending right outside, Cassian would press him for more information. As it is.

“Jyn,” he murmurs, moving his hand, rubbing his thumb over her cheekbone, forcing her to look at him. “Jyn, we have to go. I need you to get up.”

“Cass…” she repeats, eyes glazed, lips trembling.

“Yes, it’s me. Look at me.”

Slowly, she does, and he exhales in pure relief.

“Good,” he breathes, nodding. “We have to get out of here. Right now. Can you walk?”

She lets him pull her to her feet, and as she stands she realizes how the whole building is trembling, and that a distant roar can now be heard, coming closer and closer.

There is a sheet covering a window, and the light outside it is flickering and changing oddly, and Cassian knows he does not want to see what is happening out there. He also knows they will all find out, soon enough.

He wraps his hand around Jyn’s arm, squeezing gently. “Let’s go.”

“Come with us,” Jyn gasps, and she reaches for Saw, but the man shakes his head.

“I will run no longer,” Saw says, in little more than a whisper, and part of Cassian thinks Saw somehow knows exactly what has happened on Jedha that has caused the current unnatural shaking around them. The man looks strangely calm, and is making no move to flee.

Saw takes Jyn’s hand, and squeezes it.

“Forgive me,” he murmurs. And then he lets her go, and shoves her towards Cassian, lifting his eyes to stare hard at Cassian.

“Go,” he hisses. “Go with him, Jyn! You must go!”

Cassian needs no further encouragement.

He seizes Jyn’s hand, guiding her away from Saw and towards the shaking stairs. Jyn, for her part, does not fight him; she lets him lead her down the stairs, the two of them dodging falling rocks, as cracks bisect the ceiling, the entire system of caves threatening to fall apart at any moment. Cassian buries his fear down, focusing only instead on keeping his balance, on the movement of his feet, and the warmth of Jyn’s hand in his.

In what feels like hours, but is likely only minutes, they navigate the maze of rock and emerge outside.

Into total destruction.

Cassian understands K-2SO’s comment of  _ there is no horizon _ was not hyperbole, but fact.

Because there’s a solid  _ wall _ of rock, dirt, mountain, and hill rising through the air, turning the ground up, spilling it into the sky. A few ships are speeding through the atmosphere, and as Cassian watches, a couple are hit by falling stone, stone where no stone should be, and the ships are sent plummeting down to the earth.

Though the sound of the upcoming wave of rock is overwhelmingly loud, Cassian swears he can still hear screams.

_ The snow is falling hard, frost creeping at the edges of everything, gray overwhelming them all. _

_ The ice plateau stretches for miles, covered in bodies. _

_ Nerezza throws herself on top of her thirteen-year-old brother as the bombs begin to fall. _

_ The bombs shatter the ice. _

_ The screams are endless. _

He tears his eyes away from the unnatural destruction, looking ahead, and spots Bodhi, staring up at it all.

“Come on,” Cassian whispers, and he squeezes Jyn’s hand, and the two of them run down the slope, scrambling through the dirt, and Cassian lets her hand go, or else the two of them are liable to lose their balance and fall.

They reach Bodhi.

“Bodhi, let’s go!” Jyn yells, and she shoves at Bodhi, causing the man to stumble, but waking him out of his apparent trance.

“Follow us!” Cassian adds, and he barely waits to check that Bodhi is doing just that before he follows Jyn in an outright sprint.

He recognizes the Alliance U-wing ahead, and sees Chirrut and Baze have nearly reached it. Baze flings the door open, yelling something at Chirrut, and Chirrut scrambles in, disappearing towards the cockpit. Baze turns around, face clearing somewhat when he spots Jyn, Cassian, and Bodhi running towards him.

Jyn reaches the ship first, and Baze all but throws her inside. He does the same for Bodhi, causing the younger man to yelp, and land on Jyn, who quickly shakes him off, crawling on her knees to stare out the window.

“Cass,” Jyn cries, turning her head, but Cassian is already inside, and Baze is slamming the ship door closed.

“Kay, let’s go!” Cassian calls, throwing his blaster carelessly aside, though Baze still manages to catch it.

As Jyn cajoles Bodhi into buckling up, Chirrut steps out of the cockpit, skin unnaturally pale. He briefly claps Cassian on the shoulder before heading back towards Baze.

“Cassian,” K-2SO starts, but Cassian is already diving into the pilot’s chair.

“Get us out of here,” he snarls.

_ “What’s happening?” _ Bodhi screams from the back of the ship.

“I don’t know, I don’t know,” Jyn gasps, and Cassian can hear the pure shock in her voice.

“Jedha is dying,” Chirrut says, his voice soft yet somehow distinctly audible.

The U-wing lifts off as the ground crumbles away, and Cassian looks up, and--

Chirrut is right.

Because the Holy City, the mountains they landed on earlier, the desert that stretched for miles into the soft light of the sun?

It’s all gone.

There is only splintered rock left, thrown out of gravity, shooting into the atmosphere.

They are witnessing absolute and total annihilation.

“Go, go, go,” Jyn yells, her palm slamming against the window with her agitation.

“Let’s make the jump,” Cassian says, and K-2SO swivels to stare at him.

“I have not made the calculations--”

“I’ll make them for you,” Cassian hisses, because the world is ending, and they do not have time to do  _ anything. _

The rock-- _ Jedha itself-- _ curls and bends, threatening to slam into the ship, threatening to kill them just as surely as Jedha has been killed, and Cassian--

In the nick of time, the U-wing makes the jump to lightspeed, leaving Jedha behind to die.

 

* * *

 

Shock.

It’s the only word for what has just happened, what they have witnessed.

Once they’re at a safe distance, and once the U-wing’s flight has been stabilized, and once they’re coasting smoothly at lightspeed, Cassian gets up, and walks into the main cabin of the ship.

Bodhi is sitting against the window, staring at nothing.

Jyn sits near him, a hand pressed to her mouth, the other gripping her knee.

Baze and Chirrut sit against the wall, and Baze is hunched over, hiding his face, while Chirrut holds his hand, blinking slowly.

His face turns towards Cassian.

There are tears in his sightless blue eyes.

Cassian can think of nothing to say.

“Planet killer.”

The words come from Jyn, who has dropped her hand from her face, and is staring at Cassian with no trace amount of devastation.

“That’s what the weapon is,” she whispers. “It’s a planet killer. It’s called the Death Star. That’s what… That’s what my father said they call it.”

Cassian closes his eyes.

He had almost forgotten about the message from Galen Erso.

“I helped,” Bodhi croaks. “Kriff. I helped them build it. I…  _ I helped.” _

“It’s not your fault,” Jyn murmurs. “It’s… My father created it. I…”

She looks up at Cassian.

“He did it for me,” she breathes. “He hasn’t forgotten me. He still loves me. He, he just…” She turns away, and Cassian is frozen, utterly frozen.

_ Oh, Jyn. _

“There’s a way to destroy it,” Jyn says, and Baze’s head snaps up, and Chirrut turns his head to her. “The reactor module. It’s unstable, so if we hit it, we hit the whole station. The whole thing goes up. My father, he said there are complete plans for… For the Death Star, on Scarif. And we can get them. We can destroy it.”

There is the thinnest thread of life in Chirrut’s face, and Baze’s hand tightens into a fist.

“We have to find him,” Jyn insists.

“Eadu,” Cassian murmurs, and Bodhi’s head jerks up to look at him.

“That’s right,” Bodhi confirms.

Jyn turns to Cassian, green eyes big and bright, and devastatingly hopeful.

_ “You find him, you kill him.” _

Galen Erso has created a planet killer.

He is, perhaps, the most dangerous man the Empire has working for it.

Cassian knows what he must do. He knows what the correct thing to do is.

Kill Galen Erso, before he can create something else, before he can create a second Death Star, before he gives the Empire a weapon the Alliance cannot destroy.

Cassian just isn’t sure if it’s the  _ right _ thing to do.

Galen Erso is an Imperial scientist who has created the ultimate weapon; how could he be redeemed?

“I know why I thought you looked familiar.”

Cassian startles at Bodhi’s soft words. He frowns at him.

“What?”

“I know why I thought you looked familiar,” Bodhi repeats. “Your surname; it’s Andor, right? That’s what… Chirrut called you that. Cassian Andor.”

“What of it?” Cassian snaps, because he is exhausted and sad and terribly guilty and lost.

Bodhi swallows.

“The Empire, it… The Senate might be a sham, but the Empire still keeps up appearances,” Bodhi says. “For the time being, I guess. With a… A p-planet killer…”

He trails off. Cassian waits.

“The Empire likes to bring in government figures it finds sympathetic, to work with,” Bodhi continues. “I’d see a few at the Academy, before I was assigned to the run between Jedha and Eadu. There’d be ministers of planets, or kings, or… Or senators.”

It hits Cassian, at last, what Bodhi is trying to say.

Why he thought Cassian looked familiar, like he’d seen him before.

As Cassian has gotten older, he’s grown to look more and more like his brother.

“Zeferino Andor is a senator overseeing construction of the Death Star,” Cassian surmises.

“I recognized him in your profile,” Bodhi confirms. “He comes by Eadu, sometimes. Walks around a bit, chats with the scientists. Follows… Follows the kyber to wherever it goes after Eadu.”

Cassian closes his eyes.

_ “I hope, that one day, you will forgive me.” _

_ “For what?” _

_ “For all of it. Any of it.” _

_ How do you expect me to forgive this, Zeferino? _

On Coruscant, after saving Jyn, Cassian had looked at Zeferino, and gotten a glimpse of the older brother he’d loved and adored, the one who helped raise him, the one he’d looked up to.

The glimpse was fleeting, but it was enough to give Cassian something equally fleeting.

_ Hope. _

That, maybe, Cassian was wrong.

Maybe some Imperials still had goodness in them.

That maybe, even if he could never fully forgive Zeferino, because he could never forgive the murder of Nerezza; that maybe, Cassian could grow to see Zeferino’s regret and guilt, and forgive him for some of what he’d done. Pieces of it.

_ “Thank you, Zeferino. I will not forget this.” _

_ “You should.” _

Because that act of kindness, saving the life of Cassian’s wife?

Cassian sees now just how unusual it was for Zeferino Andor.

How it was the kind of thing he had never done before, and never would again.

There is no goodness to be found in someone who sanctions the creation of a planet killer.

No goodness to be found in someone who creates a planet killer.

A brother can claim to love a brother by saving his life, and a father can claim to love a daughter in a message, but what does any of it matter when they bring about annihilation? When they kill millions of people, when they destroy an  _ entire planet? _

Galen Erso must die.

And Cassian will be the one to do it.

And then, after? When he has lost Jyn, when he has fractured the only family he has left?

Then.

Then, he will find Zeferino Andor.

And finally kill him.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Woof, okay.
> 
> The Tatooine mention was a stupid shout-out to Luke, puttering away over there. Chirrut is pretty force-sensitive in this story; more obviously than he was in the movie, I think? Or... with more examples? Something.
> 
> Sloooooowly getting to Zeferino stuff.
> 
> It is safe to assume that the Jyn/Saw/Galen message scene is the same as it was in the movie. It is also safe to assume the Krennic stuff is the same, though you now know Zeferino Andor is also very involved in the creation of the Death Star. he knows Galen, and this will come up soon.
> 
> [If you're like "but Zeferino's met Jyn, does he not know they're related??" Zeferino never hears Jyn's real surname in BLOOD BROTHERS. she's going by Andor, and this is the whole reason he saves her life in the first place. he never learns of another name for her.]
> 
> I'm not sure when the next chapter will be posted; I know what's gonna happen, but I haven't started writing it yet. Tomorrow will be dominated by THE LAST JEDI and my THE LAST JEDI anxiety, so nothing will be posted tomorrow, but I hope to have something on Friday. HOPEFULLY. I know that is not the news you want to hear after a chapter that ends so sadly, and bitterly.
> 
> [This is not going to go the way you think.]
> 
> [But if you're straight-up like "I do not want to keep reading this story if x or x happens," then you can hit me up, either here or on tumblr. I'm okay with giving "spoilers" though I recommend just waiting a little bit, and having a little faith. ; ) ]


	5. Midpoint

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “What did Draven say to you, Cassian?” Jyn says, and it is less a question and more a demand.

_Weapon confirmed. Jedha destroyed. Mission target located on Eadu. Please advise._

He waits.

The response is quick, and brutal.

_Orders still stand. Proceed with haste. Keep to the plan._

Cassian had expected nothing less, but he still closes his eyes, resting his forehead on the cool wall of the ship. He feels the dread, the despair, bubbling up in him, so he focuses on keeping his breathing even, and the hum of the ship underneath him.

When he opens his eyes and turns, K-2SO is staring at him.

“What?” Cassian snaps.

“Nothing,” K-2SO says, and every time K-2SO says _Nothing_ he really means the exact opposite of _Nothing,_ but Cassian is too tired and sad to question him further.

He walks into the main cabin of the U-wing.

Chirrut and Baze are in their corner, leaning close. Both have their eyes closed, and they might be sleeping, but they may also just be processing their heartbreak together. Cassian won’t bother them.

Under the long window, Bodhi and Jyn are talking.

“Um… Black, I think?” Bodhi says, frowning. “I never noticed any color in it.”

“That’s how he’s always taken his coffee,” Jyn says, all wide eyes and bright smile, and it physically hurts Cassian to look at her. “What about food? What’s his favorite food on base?”

“Well he’d usually eat with the officers, or guests of honor,” Bodhi replies, and his eyes slide to Cassian, who understands that Zeferino would be one example of a guest of honor. “But he liked visiting with the rest of the staff in the caf, sometimes. Pilots, like me, or base workers from all departments. And he was always there on nerf cubes night.”

Jyn laughs. “I _hate_ nerf cubes, but he’s always liked that dish. Mama and I couldn’t understand it. We teased him for it.”

She looks up at Cassian then, her face still so bright, and he does his best to smile back at her.

Bodhi clears his throat.

“I’ll go, uh, see if Kay… Needs any help,” he says, jumping to his feet and shuffling away.

Cassian takes Bodhi’s seat, and chooses not to comment on Bodhi’s lack of subtlety.

“You okay?” he asks.

Jyn shrugs. “I dunno. Probably not. There’s… There’s a lot going on.”

“There is,” Cassian murmurs. “I am… I’m sorry. About Saw.”

Jyn looks away, her knuckles tightening around the seat under her.

“Yeah, me too,” she mumbles. “But he died the way he would have wanted to; refusing to be afraid.”

“Worse ways to die.”

“Yeah.”

They’re quiet.

Cassian looks over at Chirrut and Baze, but neither man has moved. From the cockpit, he can hear Bodhi and K-2SO talking.

He turns back to Jyn, and wraps an arm around her shoulders, and pulls her close.

She looks up at him.

Neither of them are very into public displays of affection; the most is usually the occasional hand-holding, or a pause to touch a shoulder, or a back. They’ve never kept their relationship a secret, but also never spoken about it with abandon; though word travels fast around a base filled with soldiers interested in fun or casual gossip, and so most of the Alliance is aware.

So this gesture from Cassian is pretty unusual.

“I’m sorry,” he says again, but he isn’t sure what he’s apologizing for.

Maybe everything.

For the things he’s done, and all that he will do.

For the end of _them,_ and their marriage, an event rapidly approaching.

After a moment’s hesitation, Jyn curls into him, pressing her face against his chest, and fisting her hand in his shirt. He rests his chin on her head, and wraps his other arm around her, and listens as her breaths stutter, as she fights her sobs.

He doesn’t tell her _It’s okay,_ because it isn’t.

You never truly get over the death of someone you loved, even if that person disappointed you, even if they abandoned you.

And Jyn; she has a hard time letting go.

As evidenced by her enthusiastic interrogating of Bodhi on her father’s habits.

He wonders if, after he kills her father, after she leaves him, if she will ever ask someone if he still hums unconsciously under his breath as he pilots, if he’s still an incredibly light sleeper, if he still carries the dagger that had belonged to his late father.

If he still wears the marriage pendant carrying a lock of her hair.

If he still hasn’t moved on from her.

Cassian knows he won’t.

He’d long ago contented himself with the very likely probability of living a single and lonely life, until Jyn had strolled into his life with all her blinding light. It was then that he knew he wasn’t going to be alone; that is, until he lost her.

Which he knew he would, sooner or later.

He just hadn’t really considered that it would be _him_ who would cause the end of them.

He closes his eyes, and presses his nose into her hair, and inhales the scent of her, aware he is running out of time.

It’s a very cruel thing to do, he thinks, to pull her so close with the knowledge that she would shove him away if she could read his mind, and know what was coming.

But he’s also always known himself to be a cold, cruel man, and so this isn’t really out of character.

Cassian opens his eyes.

Baze’s eyes are still closed, and the ship is now practically shaking with his violent snores, but Chirrut is awake, and staring directly at Cassian.

Cassian suddenly hears Chirrut’s voice in his head, the words he’d said to him earlier.

_“You still have time, Cassian Andor.”_

Cassian looks straight back at Chirrut, in case the man can also hear him.

 _No,_ he thinks. _I don’t._

 

* * *

 

Eadu, as it turns out, is a rainy planet.

An _overwhelmingly_ rainy planet, and the U-wing groans under the onslaught of so much water, and it’s all Cassian can do to keep the ship flying level. This is not helped by K-2SO’s incessant panicking, nor Bodhi’s yelled directions, as welcome as the latter is. Cassian has never been the most talented pilot, and his only goal is not killing everyone on board, damn whatever happens to the U-wing.

“Go sit down, and strap in,” Cassian snaps at Bodhi.

“No way,” Bodhi hisses. “You can’t land this thing without me.”

That’s probably true.

He probably should have had Bodhi fly the ship onto Eadu, but there’s no time to switch out now.

The ship lands.

But _lands_ is a charitable choice of word; the ship mostly crashes, skidding through rock and gravel, losing key engine parts and cracking windows. Rain drips inside, and a stream pours down on K-2SO, who issues a few key swear words, shifting out of the way.

“Well done,” Bodhi says, dryly, but Cassian is too anxious to rebuke the remark.

“How are our comms?” he asks K-2SO.

“Well-done,” K-2SO replies, eyeing a literal fire under the communications tower, using the other definition of the term. Bodhi runs to put it out.

Cassian represses a groan. Losing contact with base is never something that works out well. He gets to his feet, pushing Bodhi aside, and walking to the cabin.

Jyn has already unbuckled, and is pulling a rain poncho over her head. Baze is resetting his repeating cannon to a water resistant state, muttering something unkind about the landing under his breath.

And Chirrut is sitting still, both hands wrapped tightly around his lightbow, sightless eyes trained on the floor, muttering a prayer.

Cassian switches out his jackets.

As he pulls the blue parka on, he’s reminded of running around on Fest as a child, of the cold that necessitated wearing a coat like this at all times, and when he blinks, he sees Nerezza, smiling and holding her hand out to him.

_“Be brave, Cassi.”_

He blinks again, and all he can see is the gray of the ship.

“Okay,” he breathes, turning to the others, who are all there, looking at him expectantly. “Bodhi, where is the lab?”

“The research facility?”

“Wherever Galen Erso works.”

“The research facility,” Bodhi confirms. “Just over the ridge.”

He points out the open (read: broken) door, but the rain is coming down too hard, and the sky too dark, for Cassian to have any idea what he’s pointing at.

“Okay,” Cassian repeats. He works on assembling his rifle, switching it into sniper mode as he speaks. “Here’s what we’re doing. Bodhi and I will go down to the ridge and take a look at the site, and see if we can spot Galen. Chirrut and Baze will go up to higher ground, to see if they can find a better vantage point, and keep an eye out for Imperial shuttles; we passed over a shuttle depot on our way in. Jyn will see if she can find an Imperial ship or shuttle for us to steal; this U-wing is useless to us. And Kay will work on sending a message to base, letting them know we made it.”

A short silence follows these orders.

And then comes the pushback Cassian had expected.

“I’m coming with you,” Jyn says.

“Why is the blind man going to be one of our lookouts?” K-2SO asks.

“The blind man can see better than you,” Baze snaps.

“Do you have an extra rain poncho I can borrow?” Bodhi wonders.

Chirrut is, unexpectedly, the only one without an objection.

“Yes, Bodhi,” Cassian says, jerking his head to the small closet behind him. “Agreed, Baze. Kay, the _blind man_ is going to be one of our lookouts because we all know he doesn’t need his sight to see. And Jyn, I need you to find us a ship more than I need you on the ridge with Bodhi and me.”

“Bodhi can point us in the right direction,” Jyn says, quickly. “And then he can go find a ship. Bodhi knows this area, he can locate one more quickly than I can.”

“Bodhi needs to be on the ridge to identify the other Imperial leaders and scientists we see,” Cassian replies. “I can recognize Galen, but probably not anyone else we might see there. And Jyn, everyone here knows you have no trouble finding and stealing a ship.”

Both Baze and K-2SO nod.

Jyn glares at Cassian.

“My father is down there,” she says.

“I know,” Cassian says. _I know._ “But right now, it’s more important that we have an escape plan.”

Jyn’s lips purse, and he knows she’s working through his arguments, searching for something unsound or something to object to.

“We don’t have much time,” Cassian says. “Someone at the research facility likely saw us go down, so we must hurry. Let’s go.”

“Why is…”

Everyone looks at Bodhi.

The pilot is frowning, staring at the rifle Cassian has pressed against his own shoulder.

“That’s a sniper rifle,” Bodhi says, his voice now confident.

“What of it?” Cassian snaps.

“I thought we were only going to have a look,” Bodhi says, and he sounds more confused than accusing, which is something Cassian can work with.

“I’m not going to turn down an opportunity to kill Imperial leaders,” Cassian replies, and this is actually true.

But Jyn is staring at Cassian; _really_ staring at him, like she had the first time they met.

“What did Draven tell you?” she asks, suddenly.

“What?”

“Before we left Yavin 4,” Jyn says, speaking slowly at first, and then more quickly with her growing suspicion, “Draven pulled you aside, and said something to you. But you didn’t tell us what it was. I thought that meant it either wasn’t important, or that it was about something that didn’t have to do with the mission. But now I wonder…”

She trails off. Cassian doesn’t look away from her.

“What did Draven say to you, Cassian?” Jyn says, and it is less a question and more a demand.

“He told me to send my report about what happened on Jedha directly to him,” Cassian replies smoothly, meeting Jyn’s eyes unflinchingly. “He stressed the secrecy of the mission, and that only he and Mothma were aware of it. I followed his orders, and sent in my report only to him.”

The rain is very loud on the metal of the ship’s body.

“You’re lying,” Jyn whispers.

“I’m not,” Cassian insists, but he has never wanted to lie to Jyn, has never actually lied to her before, save for the occasional white lie about how her hair looks in the morning, or if she had been the real winner of a sparring match on base.

He has never truly lied to Jyn, not about something this important, or life-changing.

He thinks he maybe should have practiced, given how she knows him better than anyone else does.

“You’re lying,” Jyn repeats, her voice rising, her eyes burning bright. “You’re lying to _me._ Why are you lying to me, Cassian?”

“Jyn--”

“Don’t! Did Draven tell you to kill my father?”

Cassian looks at her.

All of the air leaves Jyn, making the same noise as the sound of Cassian’s heart breaking.

“No,” she breathes. “No, you… _What the hell is wrong with you?_ That’s my _father,_ out there! You know what he means to me, you know how long I have _waited_ to see him again! How can you do this? How can you… How can you do this to _me?”_

“He’s an Imperial scientist,” Cassian says, voice cold, and Jyn’s eyes widen, because he has never spoken to her like this before. “He’s built a _planet killer,_ we just watched his work _destroy_ Jedha--”

“He is _still my father!”_ Jyn yells, taking a step closer to him. “And I _love_ him--”

“Maybe you shouldn’t.”

“Maybe I shouldn’t love _you.”_

Jyn’s breathing is harsh, her eyes bright and angry.

But she doesn’t take the words back.

They stare at each other.

_“Thank you, Zeferino. I will not forget this.”_

_“You should.”_

“You shouldn’t,” Cassian says to Jyn, now. “I warned you. I’ve always warned you. I will do anything the Alliance asks of me. You knew that. I’ve always been this way.”

“Sorry if I thought better of you,” Jyn hisses. “Sorry if I failed to understand that meant my husband would murder my father.”

Cassian closes his eyes for a moment, steeling himself.

When he opens them again, Jyn shrinks back a little, startled at the frigid emptiness with which he’s looking at her now.

He’s never looked at her like this before.

“You asked me if I never wished we could have more,” he whispers. “And I told you that marrying you was something I wanted, for us. What I didn’t tell you, what I could not tell you because I knew it would never come true, is that I wished I could put you before _everything,_ including the Alliance, and the cause.”

Jyn swallows, hard.

“You’re heartless,” she whispers.

“I’m not,” Cassian murmurs. “I’m really not. But if you need to think I am, to explain why I’m doing this, then that’s fine.”

He turns, and steps through the open door of the ship.

He doesn’t expect Bodhi to go with him now, so he’s a little surprised when he hears feet running towards him when he’s about twenty yards away, but he doesn’t turn to look at Bodhi, and this is why he doesn’t see the attack coming.

A foot is planted in the small of his back, and he’s thrown to the soaked rock-covered ground.

He gasps, the air briefly knocked out of his lungs, but decades of fighting have prepared him in how to respond to a surprise attack, and so he quickly rolls onto his back, and the fist aimed for his head lands in the mud next to his face.

He turns, looking up at his attacker.

It isn’t Bodhi.

“Jyn,” he breathes, still more startled than anything else, but Jyn doesn’t hesitate.

She lands a kick to his abdomen, and he grunts at the pain, but seizes her calf, shoving her back. She stumbles, and he uses the opportunity to clamber to his feet, moving quickly enough that her retaliating punch only brushes his shoulder instead of hitting it directly.

 _“Stop,”_ he snaps, but she ignores him.

He blocks the hit she aims for his kidney, and catches her wrist when she aims for his throat. The two of them have sparred before, a thousand times before, and they know each other’s fighting style as well as they know their own, and in theory, they are fairly evenly matched, even with Cassian’s height and weight advantage.

But Jyn is fighting with a single-minded fury, and isn’t holding any of her blows back.

And Cassian doesn’t want to hurt her.

“Jyn,” he yells, fighting to make his voice audible over the pouring rain. “Jyn, you won’t--”

She _shoves_ him, actually shoves him, and he barely manages to stay on his feet.

“You actually thought I was going to let you _kill my father?”_ She howls, and Cassian is able to hear her perfectly over the storm. From over her shoulder, he spots the rest of their team, hurriedly moving towards them. “I don’t _think_ so--”

“I don’t want to hurt you,” Cassian yells back, knocking her arm aside.

“Too kriffing late for that!”

The ground is dark and rocky, and he’s too focused on blocking her hits while not retaliating, and so when his right foot lands in a lower level than he expected, he trips, and Jyn’s punch lands on his jaw.

He stumbles, hissing with the pain of the blow, and there’s the sound of mechanical steps, and he turns back around.

K-2SO has finally had enough.

The droid stands there, tall, Jyn locked in his arms.

“Get _off me,_ ” Jyn snarls, but K-2SO holds firm.

“You hit _Cassian,”_ K-2SO says, and he sounds very stunned.

Whatever K-2SO thinks of Jyn; Cassian knows K-2SO never expected her to viciously attack him.

 _“Kay,”_ Jyn tries, but K-2SO doesn’t look down at her.

His face is only pointed towards Cassian.

K-2SO is loyal to the Alliance. And to Rogue One. And to the members of Rogue One.

But he is most loyal to Cassian Andor, who found him, saved him, and reprogrammed him. Cassian Andor, the first man he ever met who insisted he was not his master, but his friend.

Cassian Andor, who fought to keep K-2SO with every Rebellion they encountered.

Cassian Andor, who K-2SO would die for.

More footsteps approach, and Cassian watches as Chirrut joins them.

He walks to Cassian’s side, and stops, turning to face the others.

“Chirrut,” Jyn whispers.

“I am with the Captain,” Chirrut announces, and Cassian doesn’t think he’s ever heard anything so unexpected before.

He never would have predicted Chirrut picking his side over Jyn’s; at least, not on something so critical and devastating.

Baze joins Chirrut at Cassian’s side, because Baze Malbus will never not choose Chirrut Imwe.

All the fight drains out of Jyn.

She might be able to take Cassian on, and win; but she would not be able to fight K-2SO, Chirrut, and Baze, too.

Her eyes stare beseechingly at the former Guardians, and while Baze looks very sorry, and a little confused, Chirrut is firm, face smooth and composed.

They all stand there, Cassian with Chirrut and Baze, Jyn with K-2SO and Bodhi, and Cassian realizes this is the end of everything.

The end of Galen Erso.

The end of Jyn Erso and Cassian Andor.

And the end of Rogue One.

They’re broken.

Jyn looks at Cassian, and he’s never seen her green eyes so dead.

“I will never forgive you for this,” she says.

He nods, sure his brown eyes look just as dead as hers.

“I understand,” he says.

_“At the end of the day, he is still the monster that killed the sister who raised me,” Cassian snaps. “You can’t ask me to forgive that.”_

Cassian is set to become the kind of monster he’s long thought his brother of being.

They are truly blood brothers, in every sense of the term.

He studies his wife’s face, recognizing that this may very well be the last time he sees her, aware she might steal a ship and refuse to let him onboard, aware she might steal a ship and leave immediately all on her own, aware she might not go back to Yavin 4, aware she might disappear into the stars and return to the life she had before he inserted himself into it.

Cassian suspects he should have left her alone on Takodana, that he should not have chased after her, following her light.

He would have spared her so much pain.

He thinks of telling her that he’s sorry, that he’s so sorry, but he knows she’d find his apologies meaningless. It isn’t an unfair belief.

But he only looks at her, memorizing her face, even as she looks back at him with desolation, and grief.

He doesn’t want to remember her like this.

But he must.

He looks up at the droid holding her.

“Go with her, Kay,” he says.

K-2SO’s eyes flicker. “Cassian?”

“Go with her,” Cassian repeats. “Follow her, not me. Follow her… Wherever she goes.”

And by that, he means, _She’s going to leave me, and I want you to go with her, not me._

The droid cannot actually display heartbreak, but he makes a good attempt. “Cassian--”

“Kay,” Cassian interjects. “Please.”

He’s never pleaded with K-2SO before, and so it works now.

K-2SO nods, and Cassian nods back.

This will also have to be an acceptable farewell.

Cassian turns, and walks away from everything.

 

* * *

 

Jyn watches Cassian go.

She holds her breath as he does, certain that if she lets herself breathe, she will start to scream, and never stop.

The pain of watching Chirrut and Baze go with him only adds to this fear.

K-2SO waits until the three men have disappeared into the dark before he lets Jyn go.

“Jyn--”

“I don’t care what Cassian told you,” Jyn snaps, and she thinks, vindictively, that she sounds as cold and cruel as her husband. “If you follow me, I’ll shoot you. Don’t test me.”

K-2SO hesitates, recognizing the rage in her voice.

The sound of a throat clearing makes woman and droid turn.

Jyn had somehow managed to forget about Bodhi.

The ex-Imperial pilot looks nervous, and very shell-shocked, standing there in the rain.

“We should look for a ship,” he says.

“Yes,” K-2SO agrees. “You and Jyn can look for a ship, while I try to repair our communications--”

“No,” Jyn interrupts.

She looks up at K-2SO.

“Cassian told you to follow me, right?” Jyn says. “So that means you’ll do what I say.”

“To an… extent,” K-2SO replies, and she knows he means that he won’t harm Cassian.

“You and Bodhi need to go find us a ship,” Jyn orders.

“Jyn,” Bodhi starts.

“Listen,” Jyn snaps, staring Bodhi down. “If this all goes to hell--which it seems it most likely will--then _someone_ will have to get to the Alliance, to tell them about my father’s message. About the plans for the Death Star on Scarif, and that we can use the plans to find a way to destroy the reactor module, and blow the whole thing up. I need that person to be you, Bodhi. I need you to carry my father’s message just a bit further. Please.”

They stare at each other.

Jyn has only known Bodhi for about a day, but she knows she trusts him, including with the critical importance of her father’s message.

Because she’d gathered, from her talk with Bodhi on the flight from Jedha, that Bodhi was also someone who loved Galen Erso, and would do what he asked of them.

He won’t fail Galen now.

After a moment, Bodhi nods.

“Good,” Jyn breathes. “Let’s go.”

The droid and man follow her, as she jumps and climbs over rocks, sliding a little on loose gravel, shoving her drenched bangs out of her eyes. The path is difficult, and dangerous, but Jyn moves with determination, focusing on her rage and not her heartbreak.

Clearly, Cassian cannot be saved. She cannot save him from himself.

But, maybe: she can save Galen Erso from Cassian Andor.

They clamber up a hill, coming upon the lights from the nearby shuttle depot.

“Okay,” Jyn says, eyeing the sight. “This is it. Head down there and see what you can do.” She lifts her comlink meaningfully. “I’ll call when I’m ready, and you can pick me up here. Okay?”

“Okay,” Bodhi says, nodding.

K-2SO hesitates, but nods as well.

“Right then,” Jyn says, and turns to keep going, until Bodhi’s voice halts her progress.

“Jyn,” he calls. “Cassian’s never met Galen, right?”

She pauses, and turns around. “Right.”

“So… Maybe he won’t recognize him.”

Bodhi, Jyn thinks, is even more optimistic than her.

Unfortunately, his optimism will not be rewarded.

“He’ll recognize him,” she says. “Because I have my father’s eyes.”

 

* * *

 

The rain seems to be coming down harder than ever.

Cassian crouches, and leans the rifle against the rock in front of him.

Baze lingers back, eyes trained on the stormy sky, but Chirrut has followed Cassian to the very edge of the ridge, a cavernous valley stretched out below them. The wind occasionally sends bits of gravel and mud plummeting down below.

“Aren’t you going to say anything?” Cassian asks, setting the rifle up.

Chirrut shrugs, gaze trained towards the research facility, lightbow held loosely in his hands.

Cassian is visited by a rush of foreboding.

“You aren’t going to hit me with that, are you?”

“No,” Chirrut says, but adds nothing further.

Cassian decides to trust him.

He bends, and peers through the iron sight lens.

The rain partially diminishes the lens’ reach, but Cassian can still easily make out the research facility, the platform that stretches out over a cliff. He spots officers and stormtroopers alike patrolling the platform, blasters held loosely, scanning the sky and cliffs. But Cassian and Chirrut are dressed in dark clothes, and the Imperials have no hope of finding them here.

A small group of men dressed in white jumpsuits are standing awkwardly in the middle of the platform, huddled against the strong wind. They look very out of place, and Cassian frowns, scanning their faces and jumpsuits, trying to figure out who they are.

He’s distracted by the sound of a shuttle approaching.

Cassian and Chirrut automatically duck down, crouching close to the rock, but they are so small and so well-camouflaged that the Imperial shuttle flies right over them. Both men straighten, and Cassian returns to the iron sight lens, tracking the shuttle as it approaches the platform, landing with a thump, exhaust spilling from its sides.

Stormtroopers and Imperial officers approach the lowering platform of the shuttle, followed by a man in an odd gray uniform, one Cassian has not seen before.

Cassian trains his gaze on this lone man.

The man’s hair is thin, brown peppered with gray, strands of it blowing around his face. Stubble covers his chin and cheeks, meeting the age lines of a face that has likely seen a lot, making up a profile that is distantly familiar to Cassian.

He remembers how Bodhi had recognized Cassian was related to Zeferino by the similarity of their profiles.

The man’s face turns, and Cassian finds himself looking at big green eyes.

He’d recognize those eyes anywhere.

It’s Galen Erso.

Cassian’s target.

The man responsible for the Death Star, the most deadly and dangerous weapon the galaxy has ever seen.

It’s Galen Erso.

Jyn’s father.

The man who loves her, who has claimed to do the things he does to protect her, whose work separated him from her.

This is also a sentence that might describe Cassian Andor.

Cassian focuses on Galen’s face, his finger resting on the trigger of the rifle.

Galen Erso steps forward, walking to meet an approaching man dressed in the white uniform of a senior Imperial leader. Cassian briefly turns his gaze on this man, but he doesn’t recognize him, and so he turns his gaze again, to a man dressed in dark gray who has gotten off the shuttle with the man in white.

And Cassian’s breath catches.

He recognizes that profile, because it’s strikingly close to his own.

And that nose, it belonged to their mother.

And those eyes, they belonged to their father.

Zeferino has not changed much since Cassian last saw him, some six months previously, when he sat across from Zeferino, in his brother’s apartment in the Senate District on Coruscant. Zeferino’s hair is shorter than Cassian’s, and neater, and his face is clean-shaven, and his clothes are clean and expensive.

But they share their father’s chin, and their mother’s nose.

And their eyes are both brown, though Zeferino has their father’s eyes and Cassian has their mother’s.

It’s undeniably Zeferino Andor, there on the platform of a research facility on Eadu.

Cassian swallows hard, and forces himself to return to Galen Erso.

Galen Erso and the unknown man in white speak briefly, and then the stormtroopers behind the man in white raise their blasters.

Cassian stares.

He wonders if Galen Erso might be killed before he can get to him.

He watches, holding his breath, and then Galen Erso suddenly leaps forward, waving his arms, throwing himself in front of the men behind him.

 _His_ men.

Cassian blinks.

He’s saved them.

It is a brave, noble act.

A _good_ act.

_Jyn brushes her fingers over his face._

_“Maybe there can still be goodness in Imperials,” she murmurs._

Zeferino is just feet away from Galen Erso, watching him with an impassive look on his face.

Before anyone can do anything more, Zeferino lifts his arm, and the stormtroopers fire, killing the men Galen Erso had tried to save.

Zeferino: someone who has committed only one known act of goodness by saving Jyn, stacked up against the murder of Nerezza, the overseeing of the construction of the Death Star, and now the senseless deaths of Galen Erso’s team on Eadu.

Cassian hears his brother’s voice in his head, from half a life ago.

 _“You are not Ezza, Cassi. And you are not me. You’re better. You’re_ good. _Remember that.”_

Cassian feels himself trembling.

 _“You’re better. You’re_ good. _Remember that.”_

The rifle, resting on a sharp rock, is making a soft noise from Cassian’s shaking.

He hears Nerezza’s voice in his head.

_“Be brave, Cassi.”_

_“Yes, Ezza.”_

The rain is still coming down hard, but from somewhere far away.

_“Do you never wish we could have more?” she asks._

_Of course,_ Cassian says to this memory of Jyn.

_“You asked me if I never wished we could have more,” he whispers. “And I told you that marrying you was something I wanted, for us. What I didn’t tell you, what I could not tell you because I knew it would never come true, is that I wished I could put you before everything, including the Alliance, and the cause.”_

It’s a wish.

A dream.

It could never happen.

Not as Cassian is. Not with who he is.

But he looks at Galen Erso, and he sees Jyn.

He sees _her._

_“It’s not that I think you’re going to leave me,” she says. “It’s that I worry you’re going to put the cause before me. Before us.”_

He has. He does. He will.

_“Do you never wish we could have more?”_

_Always,_ he thinks now.

_“I warned you. I’ve always warned you. I will do anything the Alliance asks of me. You knew that. I’ve always been this way.”_

_“Sorry if I thought better of you,” Jyn hisses._

Galen Erso speaks, and he looks both heartbroken and furious.

Like Jyn, heartbroken and furious, telling Cassian she would never forgive him for the murder of her father.

_“Do you never wish we could have more?”_

_I wish--_

_I wish--_

Cassian breathes, and breathes.

_Whatever Cassian is, whoever Cassian is; he doesn’t abandon people he loves. He refuses to leave them behind._

_This is, perhaps, the only value Cassian has ever refused to compromise, even for the Rebellion._

_It was what inspired him to go back for Jyn’s body on Coruscant, when he believed her to be dead; his determination to refuse to leave her on an Imperial-controlled world, the homeworld of the Empire._

_It’s the kindest act of love he’s ever performed, he thinks. The most true._

_The closest he’s ever come to putting Jyn before everything else._

He closes his eyes.

_“Do you never wish we could have more?”_

He breathes, and--

_What if we can._

The thought is foreign to him. Unknown. Original, and brand new.

_What if we can._

The thought belonging to a better man.

_“I know you love me,” she says._

_No, you don’t._

_Because I never loved you like I should have._

_I never loved you like I want to._

_I never loved you like I do._

The rain is falling hard, but it’s possible the water on his face also comes from tears.

_“My mother loved me, too,” she murmurs. “And she still left me.”_

_I won’t,_ he thinks.

He won’t leave her.

Unlike everyone else who has loved her; he won’t leave her.

Except; Jyn thinks he has already left her.

By killing her father.

So: he’ll come back to her.

By refusing to do the thing she has already told him she won’t forgive. The crime that would prevent him from going back to her.

Cassian lets the rifle drop carelessly to the hard rock.

He leans back on his knees, breathing raggedly, painfully aware that he’s crying.

He feels both empty and full, and warm and cold.

It’s a lot. It’s so much.

He feels like he’s lost something, and he knows it isn’t Jyn.

But it is, maybe, himself.

That single-minded, ruthless, sacrificing self, devoted to the cause more than anything else.

He feels distant from that now.

He doesn’t know what to feel, what he is anymore.

He searches for a lifeline, for a cause, and feels the weight of the marriage pendant on his chest.

He’s startled by the hand that grips his shoulder. Cassian turns his head, and meets Chirrut’s blue eyes. The man is smiling, widely, face turned towards Cassian.

“You knew,” Cassian breathes.

Somehow; Chirrut knew that Cassian would not kill Galen, and this is why he followed Cassian to the ridge.

_"You still have time, Cassian Andor."_

But Chirrut shakes his head.

“No,” he says. “But I hoped.”

 

* * *

 

Jyn runs along the cliffside, her boots sinking into deep puddles, sending mud flying everywhere, splattering her legs.

But she doesn’t stop.

She ducks behind a boulder, and peers towards the platform that is now only some forty yards away.

She squints her eyes, focusing on a vaguely familiar man in a gray uniform.

A moment later, she gasps.

_Papa._

She begins to run towards him.

 

* * *

 

Miles and miles above Eadu, fresh from hyperspace, regrouping and preparing for an assault run on the research facility below, is an Alliance Squadron.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> First off: I'm sorry it took a whole WEEK for me to update! if you read the Nonsense, you know this is very unlike me. I saw THE LAST JEDI twice last weekend and I just. I LOVED it. Top three STAR WARS movie for me. So my weekend was dominated thinking about that movie, and it was hard to return to this AU. but here I am! I will finish this, but the next update probably won't be tomorrow. Friday, though.
> 
> Anyway...
> 
> Cassian couldn't kill Galen. Jyn wouldn't forgive that. and that would be a bummer. and to be clear, when Jyn attacked him, she wasn't looking to kill Cassian; just do enough damage to prevent him from killing Galen. probably hoping to knock him out.
> 
> [and yes it was super weird writing another version of this scene after the one in GRAY AREAS.]
> 
> [is this the real midpoint of the story? we just don't know.]
> 
> so Mads Mikkelsen doesn't have green eyes? [I would say?] but Felicity Jones does? but the ROGUE ONE novelization insists they have the same eyes. so we're just going with that.
> 
> the Eadu chapters will jump around a bit from perspective to perspective, a la the movie, and the first chapter.
> 
> the "well done/ well-done" joke is in the top 10 of best jokes I've ever written tbh.


	6. Illumination

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Jyn. My stardust.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> CW: graphic depiction of violence, minor character death(s)

Bodhi has spent plenty of time in the shuttle depot outside the Imperial research facility on Eadu, but he thinks he’s never visited it while feeling this anxious.

He hears Jyn Erso’s voice in his head.

_ “I need you to carry my father’s message just a bit further. Please.” _

He will do this, for Jyn, and for Galen.

At Bodhi’s side is K-2SO, a droid who, in theory, should look very comfortable in this Imperial environment. But K-2SO has managed to make himself look gangly, and awkward, and doesn’t try to hide the curious looks he shoots other Imperial droids they pass, even as these other droids don’t spare him so much as a glance.

“Stop. Looking,” Bodhi hisses out of the corner of his mouth.

K-2SO glances at him, but thankfully does not say anything.

The man and droid are avoiding the wide hallways of the depot; Bodhi isn’t sure he’s been reported as MIA just yet, but he knows he should assume he has been. He’s certainly been away from his post long enough for that. As long as they don’t get too close to anyone, an Imperial droid and shuttle pilot (even if his uniform is dusty, and well-worn) shouldn’t attract much attention.

Bodhi stops, and peers down a corridor.

A single Imperial shuttle, a Zeta-class cargo shuttle, the type of shuttle Bodhi would fly to and from Jedha, has been parked at the end. Bodhi glances around it. No one appears to be in sight.

Bodhi nods, and turns back to K-2SO.

“Okay,” he breathes. “Now we just--”

“Hold it.”

Bodhi freezes.

Man and droid turn around, coming face to face with a lone stormtrooper, whose expression is hidden behind his helmet.

But the blaster leveled at them says enough.

“What’s your name, pilot?” the stormtrooper asks, and Bodhi’s brain shorts out.

He tries to recover.

“Cassian… Kay,” he replies, eyes briefly flickering to K-2SO, who, for his part, does not react to Bodhi’s appropriation of his name.

“And your shuttle code?”

Bodhi blinks.

He surely can’t use his old one. 

“It’s, uh…” 

And Bodhi is struck by inspiration, or sheer stupidity.

“Rogue. Rogue One.”

The stormtrooper cocks his head. “Rogue--”

Bodhi shoves the stormtrooper, knocking the man’s blaster aside, and pushing him towards K-2SO, who does not hesitate to throw the stormtrooper into the nearest wall, knocking him out cold.

K-2SO looks down at him.

“Rogue One,” he repeats.

“Yeah,” Bodhi says, raising his chin defiantly. “That’s what you lot call your team, yeah?”

K-2SO nods.

“Yes, Bodhi Rook,” he says. “We do.”

 

* * *

 

On the ridge, Cassian breathes, and aches.

He feels like he’s run a hundred miles, feels like he’s a thousand years old, feels just so tired and exhausted, like he could lie down here and never get up.

But there is still so much to do.

Next to him, Chirrut suddenly lifts his head, turning to look around at Baze.

“Baze,” he calls.

“I see them,” Baze answers, and Cassian whips around, clambering to his feet.

“See what?”

Baze points to the sky.

Cassian has to squint, and make an attempt to shield his eyes from the pouring rain, scanning the stormy clouds for whatever it is that has caught Baze and Chirrut’s attention.

A moment later, he sees it.

He sees  _ them. _

Red lights, getting closer.

Red lights undeniably coming from x-wing starfighters.

Red lights signaling the arrival of an incoming Alliance Squadron.

Cassian fumbles for his comlink.

“Kay,” he shouts. “Kay, are you there?”

There’s a moment’s silence, and then--

“Yes, Cassian?”

“Did you get in touch with Yavin 4?” Cassian demands.

There’s another short pause, this one thicker. 

“No,” K-2SO replies, and Cassian closes his eyes. “You told me to follow Jyn, and she told Bodhi and me to find a ship to steal, which we are  _ working on, _ there’s a shuttle that looks like it will do nicely--”

“Kay.”

Cassian feels a cold that has nothing to do with the weather.

_ No. _

“Kay,” he breathes. “Where’s Jyn?”

Another pause.

“I believe she has gone to find her father.”

Cassian spins around, looking back to the platform, the confrontation playing out between Galen Erso, the unknown man in white, and Zeferino Andor. With the shuttle, and the stormtroopers, and assembled officers and base workers, the platform makes a prime, and obvious, target.

“Jyn,” he breathes, instinctively.  _ “No.” _

He can hear the Alliance squadron breaking through the atmosphere, his heartbeat picking up with the noise.

“Get the shuttle,” Cassian snaps. “And be on standby. And… And prepare for injuries.”

“Cassian--”

Cassian returns the comlink to his pocket, eyes locked on the platform.

He wonders if Jyn has reached it yet.

He wonders if he can possibly get there in time.

He spins, and Chirrut is already nodding.

“We will meet up later,” he says. “Call us when you’ve found her. Hurry, Captain.”

Cassian doesn’t wait for further comments, or to give direction.

He breaks into a run, a run of single-minded desperation, managing to stumble onto a narrow path leading towards the research facility.

 

* * *

 

Jyn shuffles along as quickly as she can, while moving bent over awkwardly, a difficult task indeed.

There are crates lining the sides of the platform, crates likely filled with weapons or other unimaginable horrors, and Jyn uses her small stature to her advantage, crouching behind the crates, blending easily into the dark. Rainwater quickly soaks into the knees of her pants, but she ignores the chill, peering around a corner.

A patrolling stormtrooper stumbles upon her, but she wastes no time in shoving him off the platform, sending him plummeting to the faraway ground below the research facility.

She waits a moment, and then looks again.

Her eyes skirt past the stormtroopers and Imperial officers, past the occasional droid, and past other assorted crates. She stills when her eyes land on the group of men taking up the bulk of the platform’s occupants’ attention.

She’s surprised to realize she recognizes all of the men.

The man in white, who she’d watched murder her mother when she was nine years old.

Galen Erso, her father, his back to her, but undeniably  _ him. _

And, of all people, Senator Zeferino Andor of Fest, the brother-in-law Jyn had never imagined she’d meet until she found herself in a cell on Coruscant, Zeferino peering down at her.

Zeferino and Cassian are the same height, with the same thin dark hair, same chin, and same nose.

In some ways, Zeferino looks mostly like a  _ cleaner _ version of Cassian; one whose clothes are always expensive, and proper, one who styles his hair in whatever is most fashionable on Coruscant, and one who takes care to meet a high Imperial dress standard. But Zeferino has a certain dark glimmer in his brown eyes that Cassian does not share.

Until he does.

Until he looks at Jyn, and speaks of killing her father.

Galen Erso is, somehow, not dead. Not yet. Jyn doesn’t know if it’s because Cassian is having a difficult time locking on him, what with the rain, or if he’s waiting for something, or been distracted by something.

A moment later, her question is answered.

Every single person on the platform turns, as the sound of approaching starfighters breaks through the storm, and no storm can camouflage the red lights of x-wing starfighters that undoubtedly belong to the Rebel Alliance.

Jyn realizes it’s now or never.

She gets to her feet, and runs out from behind the crate.

_ “Papa!” _

Time stops.

Galen Erso turns, squinting through the rain, looking at his daughter for the first time in thirteen years.

She watches his mouth make the shape of her name.

He takes a few steps forward, towards her, and then the starfighters converge, dropping bombs, and sending everyone on the platform flying.

 

* * *

 

When the platform explodes, a hundred yards in front of him, Cassian stumbles, and nearly falls to the ground.

_ No. No no no no no-- _

He doesn’t realize he’s speaking aloud until he starts running again.

 

* * *

 

“TIE fighters.”

Baze grunts an affirmation to Chirrut’s statement, resting his repeating cannon on a particularly sturdy rock, and training it on the sky, a sky that is rapidly becoming a battleground. Chirrut begins to transition his lightbow to a long-range rifle.

“The question is,” Chirrut says, “What are we aiming for?”

The strangeness of Chirrut’s question is the only thing that could distract Baze from looking for TIE fighters to shoot down. “What?”

“The TIE fighters, or the x-wings?”

“Have you gone mad?” Baze exclaims, privately thinking,  _ This is it. He’s finally cracked. _

Both men have just lost their entire  _ homeworld, _ and Baze thinks that the loss of such a thing is liable to unhinge even the strongest warrior.

“The x-wings will aim to hit the platform,” Chirrut explains. “And Jyn is on that platform.”

Baze groans, recognizing Chirrut’s point. “We cannot shoot down  _ Alliance starfighters.” _

Especially not a squadron aiming to destroy the research facility that was critical in the creation of the Death Star, the thing that killed Jedha.

“No,” Chirrut agrees. “But perhaps we… Make things difficult for them. Just until Cassian and Jyn can get away from the platform.”

“And then  _ we _ destroy it.”

Chirrut smiles. “Fire away, dear.”

Baze points his repeating cannon to the sky.

He shoots down a TIE fighter.

And then he knocks out the proton torpedo launchers of an x-wing.

“This could be construed as treason against the Alliance,” Baze notes, glancing at his husband.

Chirrut shrugs, effortlessly taking down two TIE fighters with a single shot.

“I like to think of it as  _ Minimizing Alliance casualties,” _ Chirrut replies. “And besides; we are rogues, are we not?”

Baze makes a noise that is half-groan, half-chuckle.

The two men shoot together.

The Imperial research facility lights up anyway, the platform being dealt a devastating blow from a passing x-wing, fire streaking into the sky, high enough that an errant TIE fighter catches fire from the explosion.

Baze and Chirrut pause.

“Jyn,” Baze breathes.

Chirrut closes his eyes, and offers a prayer.

 

* * *

 

Bodhi swears when he sees the platform in front of the research facility go up in flames.

K-2SO, in the co-pilot’s seat, goes very still.

“Oh my,” the droid comments.

“Now we know why Cassian warned us about expecting injuries,” Bodhi mutters, continuing the pre-flight checklist.

They’ve started the shuttle up, and it’s rumbling fiercely, making plenty of noise even with the explosions and shooting of the battle taking place in the sky above the depot, and so Bodhi isn’t surprised to see a squad of stormtroopers approaching.

“Incoming,” K-2SO reports, staring straight-backed at the squad.

“Get ready to lift-off,” Bodhi orders, and then he goes for the guns.

It takes only two shots, two direct hits, to send the stormtroopers flying.

Bodhi breathes.

K-2SO looks at him.

“Bodhi Rook,” the droid says. “Welcome to Rogue One.”

 

* * *

 

Jyn gets the breath knocked out of her from the force of the Alliance bombs.

She lies on her back, choking on air, and rain, and talks herself into focusing on evening out her breathing. Once this task has been accomplished, she takes stock of her body, noting she can still feel her legs, and wiggle her toes, and lift her arms, and move her fingers. She has a headache, a probable concussion from landing so hard, but that’s nothing to immediately concern herself over.

She sits up.

Bodies litter the platform. Some are splayed at terrible, unnatural angles, some are on literal  _ fire, _ some are screaming, and some can get back up. Jyn’s eyes move quickly over the bodies, desperately searching for the one she has come to find, the one whose shoulders she climbed on, the one who’d toss her, giggling all the while, into the sea of Lah’mu, the one whose arms she fell asleep in.

_ “Jyn. My stardust.” _

“Papa,” she whispers, but her father has no hope of hearing her amidst the chaos. She stumbles to her feet, her voice rising with fear and desperation. “Papa? Papa?”

_ There. _

Just ten yards away lies the body of Galen Erso.

“No,” Jyn moans, and she runs, jumping carelessly over bodies and flaming debris, until she reaches him. She drops to her knees, and holds his face in her hands, wedging her thigh under his head for support.

“Papa,” she gasps. “Papa, it’s me. It’s  _ Jyn.” _

Galen’s eyes blink sluggishly, taking in the battle-torn sky, before locking on Jyn’s face.

“Jyn?”

Galen’s voice is soft, barely a scratch of a whisper, but it’s a voice she would recognize anywhere. A voice she never thought she would hear again.

“Yes, Papa,” she croaks, feeling the hot tears mixing with the frigid rainwater on her cheeks.

“Jyn,” Galen says, with a smile this time. His hand moves, and Jyn catches it, pressing it to her face. “Jyn… I have so much to tell you.”

“Me too, Papa,” Jyn replies, trembling with the emotion racing through her. “We have time.”

 

* * *

 

“Jyn is alive.”

Baze sighs, and asks himself whether he really wants to bother asking Chirrut how he knows.

But he thinks he needs to share in his certainty.

“How do you know?”

“I can still see her,” Chirrut says, smiling towards the burning platform, looking weirdly peaceful for someone who is staring at such destruction.

“Her light?” Baze asks. Chirrut has said this before, has called Jyn one of the brightest people he’s ever seen.

Chirrut grins. “She shines.”

Baze takes down a few more TIE fighters, reveling in the feeling of vengeance each fallen ship creates in him. It is a mark of their shared loss that Chirrut does not try to chide him for the obvious anger pulsing through him; it’s an anger that is more than justified, with the destruction of Jedha, on top of all the other atrocities they have seen and heard the Empire commit.

“Ah,” Chirrut breathes, lowering his lightbow for a moment. “There’s the Captain.”

“Has he reached Jyn yet?” Baze asks, carefully tracking yet another TIE fighter. The Alliance Squadron has been momentarily distracted by the incoming TIE fighters, redirecting their efforts to destroying the hangar they’ve emerged from, and leaving the smoldering platform alone.

“Nearly,” Chirrut replies.

“And what does Cassian Andor look like?”

“Gray,” Chirrut says, as he always does.

But then he adds a new qualifier to that description: “But a little lighter.”

 

* * *

 

“Keep an eye out,” Bodhi orders, and K-2SO obeys him, peering out the window, gaze darting from side to side, and up to down, and back again.

The shuttle is flying so low to the ground it can barely be called  _ flying; _ more like hovering. K-2SO had expressed concern over the Alliance things left behind in the U-wing, noting a particularly talented hacker might be able to mine something critical from the ship’s computer and communications tower.

They’re headed back to the U-wing, to rescue what they can, and destroy what they cannot.

The U-wing is so broken this last task won’t take very long.

Bodhi bites his lip, navigating sharp rock and sporadic boulder, wincing every time the shuttle gets a little too close to calamity. The chaos of the battle between the Alliance Squadron and TIE fighters above means no one is bothering to look over the hills, to see an Imperial shuttle making an odd journey over the ridge.

They come across the crash site of the U-wing, and the lack of Imperial stormtroopers around it tells them that the Alliance Squadron above is really pulling off a marvelous (albeit, unintended) distraction.

Carefully, Bodhi executes a perfect landing, the shuttle sinking comfortably into the mud.

K-2SO turns to him.

“I don’t think he will need much convincing,” the droid says, “But the next time I see Cassian, I will  _ insist _ that you must become our pilot.”

 

* * *

 

“Did you get my message?”

“Yes, Papa,” Jyn says, grinning. “We got it. Bodhi is here, he’ll be excited to see you. We’re going to take you back to the Alliance with us, and we can make a plan to steal the Death Star plans. We’ll destroy it.  _ Together.” _

Pure relief crosses Galen’s face, until he suddenly frowns, turning his head away from Jyn, turning back towards the shuttle behind him.

“What is it?” Jyn asks, confused.

“K…  _ Krennic…” _

_ What the hell is a Krennic? _ Jyn wonders, but she follows her father’s gaze, which has stopped at a figure, standing about ten feet away on the platform.

_ The man in white. _

He’s frowning at Galen and Jyn, his face covered in ash, his white uniform stained with gray and drenched in water. There’s a hint of blood at his temple, likely from being knocked to the ground by the force of the blast.

“Who are you?” the man demands, likely gathering that Jyn is a rebel, but failing to comprehend why she’s crouched next to Galen, leaning over him protectively.

Jyn cocks her head.

She could swear the kyber crystal on her chest actually  _ warms. _

_ I know, Mama. _

“Don’t you remember me?” Jyn asks, voice as sweet as sugar and cold as ice.

The man in white only stares.

And then his eyes track down, studying Galen again.

With a sharp inhale, his head jerks back up, staring at Jyn.

“You’re the child,” he realizes.

“I haven’t been a child for a long time,” Jyn snarls. “You made sure of that when you killed my mother. She did warn you, you know. You’ll never win.”

She pulls her blaster out of the holster on her leg, and levels it at the man in white, the man her father had called Krennic, who does not draw his own blaster quickly enough.

“As a matter of fact,” Jyn says. “You’ve  _ lost.” _

And with that, she shoots the man in white, the man from her nightmares, clean through the chest.

He topples, landing with a satisfying and ungraceful  _ thunk. _

Jyn breathes, eyes frozen on the corpse before her.

Under her hand, her father’s face turns back to her.

“Jyn,” he whispers.

“It’s done,” Jyn replies, and the smile she gives him is nothing short of triumphant.

“Jyn?”

The voice comes from ahead of them, back towards the shuttle, and it is a voice that speaks with a Festian accent, a voice Jyn has heard only once before.

Slowly, she lifts her head.

Zeferino Andor stands there, fifteen feet away, staring at her with no small amount of shock. His gray robes are rumpled, and soaked, but he displays no visible injuries.

“What are you…” Zeferino starts, frowning like Krennic had, taking in the bewildering sight of Jyn holding Galen Erso’s face in her hands. “And where is--”

But then Zeferino glances up, and Jyn only sees his eyes widen before he dives to the steel ground of the platform.

Two red blaster shots fly through the air where his head had just been.

Jyn twists around.

The look on Cassian’s face is something to behold.

Something to fear.

 

* * *

 

Cassian hadn’t had time to prepare himself for confronting Zeferino. For looking into his older brother’s face, for seeing his brother look at him with recognition, and shock. For seeing his brother standing there, looking down at a prone and exposed Jyn.

As Cassian crosses the burning platform, all he feels is rage, and a drive for revenge.

_ “Be brave, Cassi,”  _ Nerezza whispers in his ear.

“Get  _ up, _ Zeferino!” Cassian shouts, and he sounds nothing like himself.

He recognizes that Jyn is right there, and mercifully alive, and staring at him in astonishment. She’s crouched over the body of a man, and though Cassian doesn’t give the man more than a passing glance, he knows from Jyn’s position that the man is Galen Erso.

“Jyn,” Cassian says, voice smooth, and weirdly calm. He stops by her, looking down at her. “Are you hurt?”

“Uh, no,” Jyn says, blinking up at him. “Cass, are you--”

Cassian catches movement from Zeferino, and he spins, and fires again, but Zeferino dives behind a crate.

“Come on out, Zef,” he yells.

Zeferino does not come on out. Cassian hadn’t really expected him to.

He turns back to Jyn.

“Is your father okay?”

“He’s alive,” Jyn says, and some color and emotion beyond shock returns to her, and he catches the accusation and anger in her face.

Cassian pulls out his comlink.

“Kay,” he calls. “I’ve got Jyn and Galen. Baze, Chirrut-- _ move.” _

“On our way,” Baze grunts.

“Headed to you now,” Bodhi calls.

“Fly low,” Cassian advises, looking at the sky, at the Alliance starfighters diving through the clouds. “You’ll look like just another Imperial shuttle to those starfighters.”

“Flying low,” K-2SO confirms.

Cassian pockets the comlink.

“Galen, are you able to walk?” he asks, allowing himself a moment to look at the man.

Galen is frowning, likely completely bewildered at this turn of events, maybe even distantly aware of how Cassian looks similar to Zeferino Andor. Mostly, Cassian imagines Galen is concerned with the ire, increasing by the second, clearly displayed on Jyn’s face, directed solely at Cassian.

“I believe…” Galen says, blinking slowly, clearly stunned at all that has occurred. “Yes. Just let an old man catch his breath first.”

“We can do that. I have something I need to do before I leave here, anyway.”

“Do  _ what?” _ Jyn snaps.

Out of the corner of his eye, Cassian sees a flash of metal.

He drops, landing hard on his knees, and throws himself over Jyn, who huffs under his weight, but lets herself fall under him, to cover her father’s chest. The red bolt of light flashes over them, and Cassian twists, and fires back at Zeferino, who has already moved away.

“Jyn,” Cassian hisses.  _ “Get down.” _

“Yep,” Jyn agrees, and shuffles on her knees to a more comfortable position. Galen reaches for her, and she wraps his hand in hers, brushing his hair out of his eyes, trying to block the rain from hitting his face.

“Who are you?” Galen wonders, staring at Cassian with even more confusion.

“Cassian Andor,” Cassian replies. “Nice to meet you. I’ll let Jyn decide how to explain who I am.” 

Jyn eyes him. “Cassian, what are you--”

“Once Galen is ready to go, call Bodhi and find out where they are, and go to meet them,” Cassian says, not looking at her, but scanning the crates Zeferino had disappeared behind. “Although I doubt you’ll be able to miss an Imperial shuttle landing nearby. Once you’re both onboard, and Baze and Chirrut have joined you, tell Bodhi and Kay to take off. Don’t wait for me. I’ll find my own ride out of here.”

“Are you  _ crazy?” _

“I’m trying to kill my own brother, so yes, on Fest, that kind of thing would classify me as  _ crazy.” _

Kin killing is a most deplorable crime on Fest. It is a crime Zeferino committed thirteen years ago, when he murdered Nerezza.

It is a crime Cassian anticipates committing very, very soon.

And with relish.

“Cassian--”

“Jyn.” He turns, meeting her eyes, taking in the stress tightening her face, the hardness making her eyes dark, and the hint of worry hiding behind it all.

He looks at her like it’s the last time, and he sees her visibly startle.

“Jyn,” he repeats. “Do what you were planning on doing anyway, and  _ leave me.” _

Her face smooths, turning incomprehensibly cool, like she’s only just remembered why she had to run to this platform in the first place.

“Right,” she says, voice determined.

Cassian looks back at Galen Erso, who is staring hard at him, a look of suspicion and understanding crossing his face. Cassian wonders what his own might be projecting.

He thinks of all the things he’d like to say to Galen Erso.

_ You left her. You broke her heart.  _

_ In spite of that, she is hopeful, and kind. _

_ She’s the best person I’ve ever met. _

_ I was lucky enough to spend almost six years near her. _

_ I’ll be lucky to spend even another day with her. _

_ She’s going to leave me, and I won’t be able to stop her. _

_ She’s missed you so much. _

_ You can’t leave her again. _

_ She needs as much family as she can get. _

_ She deserves that. _

_ Far more than I ever did. _

But Cassian says nothing.

He only shoves his heavy blue parka off, and carefully throws it over Jyn’s shoulders.

And then he turns, and walks away, to find and kill his brother.

 

* * *

 

Chirrut runs quickly, using his lightbow as a sort of walking stick, swinging it around to check for rocks blocking his path. Behind him, he can hear Baze’s harsh breathing, his repeating cannon thudding against his back, eliciting the occasional swear from the man.

Chirrut glances towards the platform of the research facility, still a smoldering wreck, and what he spots there makes him stumble.

Baze nearly runs him over, he’s so surprised at Chirrut’s misstep. This is a first.

“Are you okay?” he demands, clearly alarmed.

“The Force…” Chirrut breathes.

“What of it?”

Chirrut looks at the platform.

He  _ sees _ Jyn’s light, leaning over something gray and oddly stuttering. And beyond that, he sees a figure swathed in dark, being pursued by a gray figure, flickering with darkness, the Force moving around him in the bleakest of ways.

“The Force moves darkly around a creature that’s about to kill,” Chirrut whispers.

Baze glances at the platform, and makes an educated guess.

“The Captain?”

“He moves with vengeance in his broken heart,” Chirrut notes. “He’s waited a very long time to let this darkness come over him.”

There is nothing they can do from so far away.

Chirrut and Baze begin to run again, spying a lone Imperial shuttle rumbling ahead.

 

* * *

 

“Zeferino!” Cassian yells, blaster in hand, stalking towards the last spot he saw his brother.

He knows he’s being reckless, knows Draven would have his head if he saw the cavalier way Cassian is moving towards a mark, making himself an obvious target, but he also knows time is of the essence. And, besides; if he can keep Zeferino’s attention away from Jyn and Galen, they have a better chance of making it off of the platform unharmed.

He shoots at a crate, sending sparks flying, quickly disappearing into the pouring rain.

There are a handful of little fires everywhere, sustained by leaking oil and gas, and Cassian uses the fire to light his way.

“Don’t be a coward,” Cassian calls, speaking in Festian, because it is the kind of thing that would rile Zeferino; Zeferino might be the senator from Fest, but Fest is still an Outer Rim world, looked down upon by the Empire, and Zeferino likely tries to forget this, probably even smothers his accent. But it might be out now, due to the stress of the moment.

“What would Gabriel say?” Cassian yells.

A beam of red light comes flying, and Cassian barely gets out of the way, missing the shot that would have blown out his knee.

“You can do better than that,” he shouts, continuing on, undaunted. “Gabriel taught you better than that; he taught us  _ both _ better than that. Not to mention those years in the Imperial Military; or did they train you with their stormtroopers?”

“Who trained  _ you?” _ Zeferino yells, and Cassian turns, and sees his brother, blaster pointed straight at him. “You were too young to grasp our father’s lessons--”

Zeferino barely manages to dive out of the way of Cassian’s next shot.

“Nerezza more than made up for what Gabriel failed to teach me,” Cassian snaps. “Do you remember her, Zeferino? Do you remember what she looked like when you  _ killed her?” _

They are suddenly both yelling, both speaking in Festian.

“I did what was right--”

“Killing our sister was  _ never right--” _

“And killing your brother is?”

“When he’s Imperial sithspit?” Cassian laughs, but nothing about this is funny, and he’s so enraged he could swear he  _ sees _ red. “There is no day where that  _ isn’t _ right.”

Something comes flying at him then, something that is not a blaster shot, but in fact an actual  _ blaster, _ and Cassian is so surprised by this bewildering turn of events that he watches it as it flies past his head, and by the time he turns back around, Zeferino is on him.

His brother tackles him to the rain-soaked platform, and Cassian bites down a wince. They are the same height, and similarly thin, and in a lot of ways, Cassian feels like he’s fighting himself. His knee catches Zeferino in the stomach, causing his brother to huff, and he uses the opportunity to throw Zeferino off him, and clamber to his feet.

Zeferino spins, swinging his leg to knock Cassian’s out from under him, and Cassian barely stops himself from hitting the deck face-first. He twists onto his back, and Zeferino’s fist lands on the platform next to his face, causing him to howl with pain. Cassian seizes Zeferino’s boot and  _ yanks, _ and Zeferino stumbles, slipping in the water.

Cassian can’t help but think of them as children, when they would wrestle in the snow of Fest, making the other laugh with each soft blow, squabbles that usually ended with a faceful of gray snow, and their mother telling them to come in or they’d catch cold.

Those memories feel like they belong to someone else.

“Your fancy education at that Imperial Military Academy seems to be  _ severely _ lacking,” Cassian notes, groaning with the blow Zeferino lands on his stomach, and retaliating with a hit to his brother’s throat, causing him to gasp. “Where the hell did they assign you in their ranks?”

“Intelligence,” Zeferino snaps, ducking down, and Cassian laughs.

“That’s where the Rebel Alliance put me, too.”

Zeferino raises an eyebrow, and for a moment, they pause, breathing hard, staring at the other.

“Blood brothers,” Zeferino smirks, and Cassian’s single-minded rage returns.

Both men have lost their blasters, and Cassian suspects Zeferino only carries one weapon, as it would be odd and very  _ Outer Rim World _ for a senator to carry another, and Cassian is not above fighting dirty to kill him.

From his boot, he fishes out the dagger he always carries.

The dagger that belonged to Gabriel, their late father.

Zeferino’s eyes widen, recognizing the dagger even through the heavy rain.

Cassian shrugs.

“Blood brothers,” he notes.

He moves.

 

* * *

 

Jyn is torn between watching the brutal fight happening in front of her, and keeping an eye on her father. Galen has not moved, but his breathing has evened out, his heartbeat moving under her hands on his chest, and he’s blinking at her, taking in her face.

“You look like your mother,” he notes.

“I got her height,” Jyn agrees.

Galen smiles.

“More than that,” he murmurs, and lifts a hand, brushing his cold fingers over her cheek. “You have her smile. And her spirit.”

Jyn’s smile is shaky with the old grief.

She clutches Cassian’s coat around her, draping half over Galen, trying to keep them from catching a cold in the stormy weather.

“I try,” she says. “I try to make her proud.”

“You do,” Galen says, more emphatically than he’s spoken before. “And me. Always.”

Jyn grins back at him, and suddenly realizes that like her upper half, her knees are strangely warm for having kneeled in rainwater for so long.

She frowns, and reaches down, touching the oddly warm water.

She lifts her hand back up.

Her fingers are stained red.

 

* * *

 

Cassian might make fun of his brother’s education, but the fact remains that they both first learned how to fight in the battlefields that doubled as the streets of Fest, and that they both learned how to fight with a knife from their father.

Zeferino ducks and twists, and knocks Cassian’s wrist away, and dodges away from him. Cassian keeps advancing, wary of his feet, aware of his brother’s self-preservation and defensive maneuvering, and it definitely feels like he’s fighting himself.

Or his father.

_ “Stay a step back, Cassi. Evaluate your surroundings. Move with your opponent. Never use your arms to block a dagger. Step to the side, and slash their forearm. Do not swing wildly. Be faster than him.” _

_ I know, Papa,  _ Cassian thinks now, also recognizing how Gabriel probably never envisioned his two sons fighting each other with the goal of killing.

It would have been impossible to him.

But Gabriel has been dead for two decades, and oh, how the universe has changed.

In a lightning-quick move, Zeferino manages to snatch Cassian’s right wrist, holding tight to it, preventing Cassian from stabbing him. Cassian grunts, and moves to break Zeferino’s hold, and he doesn’t know how his brother does it, but the next thing he knows, Zeferino has  _ dropped _ his wrist and instead tackled him back down to the platform.

The dagger goes flying.

_ Fine, _ Cassian thinks.  _ We’ll do this the slow and painful way. _

 

* * *

 

“Papa,” Jyn breathes, staring in horror at the blood coating her fingers.

Galen blinks at the sky, blinks Jyn had registered as the slow blinks of an older man trying to recover from being thrown nearly ten yards and landing hard on his back, but which she now understands is an old man slowly losing consciousness from blood loss.

Carefully, she runs her palm over Galen’s back. She has his neck and head supported on her thighs, but in her joy at seeing him alive and talking to her, and with no discernable injuries besides his wheezing breath and clear exhaustion, she’d neglected to check him for less obvious injuries.

Under her fingers, she feels the thick metal, jutting out from his lower back.

A piece of shrapnel, from something that had gotten blown up by the Alliance bombs.

He’s been bleeding out  _ this whole time. _

“Papa,” she repeats, and Galen looks at her.

“Jyn,” he murmurs. “What is it?”

“Papa, I need you to…” But she trails off, because  _ what’s the next step? _ She can’t move Galen like this, and she’s quite sure she can’t yank the shrapnel out of his body; he’s likely got internal bleeding on top of everything else, and it’s possible the shrapnel has pierced a vital organ.

Her panicked thinking is stopped by Galen’s fingers brushing her cheek.

“Stardust,” he whispers. “You must remember that.  _ Stardust.” _

“I do,” Jyn says, confused now.

Her father had called her  _ Stardust _ in his message, and she remembers how he’d call her that when she was little.

“Named for you,” Galen grunts. “Stardust. My Stardust.”

“Right.”

Galen blinks at her, an odd smile on his face.

And then his eyes slip closed.

Jyn stops breathing.

With a most rabid, primal fear, she looks up, looking for anyone, for anyone who might be able to help, and her eyes land on the two men fighting furiously in front of her, yelling in their familial language.

 

* * *

 

“I don’t want to do this, Cassi!” Zeferino yells, eyes crazed.

“Don’t want to hurt me?” Cassian demands, and he thinks of Jyn when he adds, “You’re thirteen years too late on that.”

“You are  _ not Nerezza, Cassian!” _

But Zeferino makes a mistake.

He forgets why Cassian wants to kill him.

He forgets what him talking about Nerezza does to Cassian.

He forgets how it makes him  _ vicious. _

With a strength Cassian hadn’t known he possessed, he snaps, and seizes Zeferino by the throat.

Zeferino gasps, alarm and surprise warring in his expression, and Cassian throws him to the ground, following him down.

“Am I still  _ better than her, Zef?” _ Cassian demands.

He’s pinned his brother’s arms to his sides, kneeling over his chest, his hands wrapped around Zeferino’s throat.

_ The slow and painful way. _

_ The most intimate way to kill someone. _

Zeferino fights him, trying to throw Cassian off, but his fancy senatorial boots have no traction on the rain-soaked platform, and the desperate movements only weaken him.

“You told me I was better than her,” Cassian snarls. “And perhaps that was true. Once.”

Zeferino scrabbles, his face turning an unnatural red, staining his brown skin.

“But you know,” Cassian continues. “I think I am more like  _ you.” _

Zeferino is rapidly losing strength, and Cassian knows his end is near, his end at his own hands, the vengeance he has waited to extract for half his life.

Since he watched Zeferino shoot and kill Nerezza, the beloved sister who raised him.

Who loved him, cared for him, sheltered him, after their parents died. Who taught him everything, how to fight, how to survive, how to run.

_ “Be brave, Cassi.” _

As he stares down at Zeferino, at his brother’s fading brown eyes, he thinks of the way Nerezza’s identical brown eyes stared unseeingly at the gray Festian sky.

_ “Cassian!” _

For a moment, he thinks Nerezza has called for him.

But he blinks, and recognizes that the voice was clearly not Nerezza’s.

It’s Jyn’s.

 

* * *

 

_ “Cassian!” _

Jyn screams the name, desperately trying to catch his attention. She can see Cassian, hair and clothes soaked, pinning his brother to the platform, hands wrapped tightly around his brother’s neck.

She needs his help. She needs him to come to her, and help her carry her father off the platform, and onto the waiting shuttle. She needs him to help her figure out what to do. She needs him to help her save her father’s life.

Her father’s life, a life Cassian has inexplicably not snuffed out.

She doesn’t know what stopped him.

Only that she’s glad he did.

And she needs him to do one more thing for Galen.

And for her.

Galen’s heartbeat is thin and slow under her palm.

She isn’t even sure Cassian will answer her call. But she has to try. Even as she knows how eager Cassian is to kill his brother; she hopes he will pick  _ her. _

That he will finally pick her.

_ “Cassian!” _

 

* * *

 

Jyn yells a second time, and Cassian has never heard her sound so panicked.

He turns his head, and sees her staring at him, and even through the thick rain he can see the terror and borderline hysteria twisting her face.

Something is terribly wrong.

Galen’s body is very still, his fingers loose, head unmoving.

It is clear; there is something wrong with Galen.

Cassian looks down at his brother.

It would hardly take another minute to kill him.

Less than that, probably.

But who knows if Galen has that kind of time.

Cassian closes his eyes.

_ I’m sorry, Ezza. _

He knows he may never get another opportunity like this, Zeferino’s pulse slowing under his hands, Zeferino in the most vulnerable position anyone can be in.

Cassian is so close.

To not kill Nerezza’s murderer; that’s to be a little brother who has failed her.

But to go to Jyn now, when she calls his name; that’s to be a man trying to be better, for her.

He opens his eyes.

Abruptly, he lets go, and Zeferino gasps, coughing roughly, eyes staring up at Cassian in pure astonishment.

“You once let me leave an Imperial jail cell,” Cassian says. “And then six months ago, you let me walk out of your apartment without alerting the Empire that I was there. I still don’t understand why you did either of those things, when you clearly had no qualms about shooting me tonight. But at least, now you know; the next time I see you, I  _ will _ kill you.”

Zeferino cannot speak, his throat an ugly color; he can only stare.

Cassian stands.

“You are very lucky, brother,” he yells, so Zeferino can hear him over the storm, “That I love my wife more than I hate you.”

He turns, and walks away.

His hands feel very cold.

 

* * *

 

Cassian is coming to her.

Jyn stares at him, taking in his empty brown eyes, the soaked hair falling into them.

She called for him, and he’s coming.

His brother is still alive.

Another minute, and he would be dead.

But Cassian let him live, because Jyn called for him, and he chose to go to her.

_ He chose her. _

 

* * *

 

Chirrut and Baze reach the rumbling Imperial shuttle, and clamber in through the open door.

Baze immediately moves to the ladder leading to the cockpit, repeating cannon pointed up, meeting Bodhi, ready for him with his own blaster, liberated from the stormtrooper he and K-2SO had encountered, pointed back at him.

Baze grins.

Out of the corner of his eye he sees his husband, looking out the shuttle and back into the storm.

“Chirrut?” he calls.

When Chirrut turns back around, Baze startles at the sorrowful look on his face.

 

* * *

 

“He’s hurt,” Jyn gasps, as Cassian drops to his knees next to her.

She carefully shows him the shrapnel sticking out of Galen’s back, the veritable pool of blood that has spilled around them both.

When she looks back at Cassian, he’s staring at her like he’s sorry, like he’s so sorry.

“No,” Jyn whispers.

“We can’t move him,” Cassian murmurs, and below him, Galen’s eyes flicker at the voice that does not belong to Jyn. “If we do, the shrapnel will shift; if it hasn’t burst his kidney by now, it would when we lifted him. I’ve seen this kind of injury before.”

(When he was nineteen, he killed a man in nearly the same way.)

(He tries not to think about how he was supposed to kill Galen, and almost did, and how it looks like now he might as well have, with the similarity of the fatal strike.)

“And he’s lost far too much blood, as it is,” he adds. 

Jyn knows.

She thinks she knew the second she felt the blood on her hand.

Still, she feels herself begin to tremble with the fear, the grief, and the helplessness.

“Talk to him,” Cassian murmurs.

She closes her eyes for a moment, and then opens them, leaning over her father.

“Papa,” Jyn breathes, pressing her hand to his cheek.

“Jyn,” he slurs, eyes closed.

“We’ll do it, Papa,” she promises. “We’ll destroy it. The Death Star. I…  _ I _ will destroy it. I swear to you. I will do it.”

She thinks she sees the hint of a smile on her father’s face.

“S… Stardust,” he murmurs.

“I’m right here,” Jyn says, and her voice breaks, and she feels Cassian grip her shoulder, and she does not shake him off. “Papa,  _ please…” _

But Galen does not speak again.

Under her palm, she feels his heart stop.

She thinks hers breaks with it.

She collapses over him, pressing her face into his chest, and lets herself weep.

 

* * *

 

“Uh oh,” Bodhi breathes, peering out the front window of the Imperial shuttle.

The red lights of the Alliance Squadron are rapidly approaching.

K-2SO tracks the movement, the droid sitting very still.

From below, Chirrut yells: “Call them!”

Bodhi dives for the comlink.

“Cassian,” he shouts. “Cassian, you need to get off that platform. They’re coming back around!”

 

* * *

 

“... They’re coming back around!”

Cassian swallows, and leans over Jyn.

“Jyn,” he murmurs. “Jyn, we have to go. We have to get off this platform.”

She shakes her head, still sobbing.

“I’m so sorry,” Cassian says. “I… You have no idea how sorry I am. But we--”

He breaks off, the noise of a ship taking off distracting him.

He turns, and watches as the Imperial shuttle at the end of the platform, one that had, remarkably, not been hit by the Alliance bombs that destroyed much of the space, lift off.

Zeferino is nowhere to be seen.

Cassian’s hand tightens into a fist, but  he turns back to Jyn.

“Please,” he implores. “Please. We have to go. There’s… I’m so sorry, but there’s nothing we can do for him.”

The Imperial shuttle disappears into the clouds, avoiding the rapidly approaching red lights.

“Your father would not want you to die here,” Cassian says. “Not now. We have to get the Death Star plans, Jyn. We have to do this. For him.”

This seems to snap some life back into Jyn.

She straightens, eyes blank, but with a hint of that fire Cassian had long ago fallen in love with.

She squeezes her father’s hand in hers, and then she stands.

Cassian scrambles to his feet next to her.

“Let’s go,” Jyn says, voice empty.

He can work with that.

He keeps Jyn ahead of him, as they run, leaping over bodies and debris, the sound of the Alliance Squadron getting louder by the second. Once they’re off the platform, Jyn hesitates, turning to look back at her father’s body, and Cassian gives her a last moment.

And then the bombs start to fall.

They run.

 

* * *

 

“Here they come,” Baze yells.

He can see Jyn and Cassian racing and sliding through the mud, heads low, as TIE fighters come screaming out to meet the Alliance Squadron. The bombs are falling on the research facility behind them, igniting the very sky.

Baze feels a pang of regret that it was not his blaster that destroyed the place.

Seeing it burning down will have to be enough.

Jyn and Cassian scramble up the platform.

Cassian looks around, doing a headcount.

“Let’s go,” he yells.

The door of the shuttle closes.

Chirrut goes to Jyn, and presses his palm to her back.

She turns, and presses her face into his shoulder, and he wraps his arms around her.

“Little star,” he murmurs. “You will be alright.”

 

* * *

 

Using the knowledge of dozens of runs off this very planet, Bodhi navigates the Imperial shuttle out and away.

“Where are we going?” he asks his co-pilot.

K-2SO had already plugged in coordinates, and set a flight path.

“Yavin 4,” the droid says. “Back to the Alliance.”

Bodhi swallows.

With the thrill of the fear of the unknown, he sends them into hyperspace.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> LOL ok:
> 
> I know it seems kind of... cheap? weird? to kill Galen off like this. but I swear, there's a reason, relevant to the conclusion of the story. it will make sense.
> 
> I also said, back in Ch. 1, that this is a ROGUE ONE AU largely about Cassian, which is why Jyn kills Krennic now, as opposed to in the final confrontation. (also I like Jyn killing Krennic here, IDK.) Scarif is going to go down a bit differently, in several ways. it is possible I will get there and regret killing Krennic so early, but that's a problem for Future Me.
> 
> also I know my timeline for Jyn's life/age is wrong from canon. I figured this out far too late in the writing of the Nonsense, and totally forgot it was wrong as I started writing this, but this is already a ROGUE ONE AU so who cares.
> 
> I'm not sure when the next update will be; it is Christmas Weekend at my house, filled with relatives, and it's just a mess. at least this chapter was pretty long. I will make an attempt to write at least a little bit every day. hopefully something next Tuesday/Wednesday. I'm also working on a eulogy for Carrie Fisher, for the anniversary of her death, to be posted on my tumblr; if you read UNCURLING LIFELINES you might have a guess as to why.
> 
> happy weekend, gang.


	7. Conflict

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “This will really make us infamous,” Baze says, with an amused grin.

The shuttle is very quiet.

Jyn stands there, eyes closed, face pressed into Chirrut’s shoulder, and she forces herself to breathe. She feels Chirrut brush a hand through her hair, and she feels the warm weight of Baze’s hand on her shoulder, and she lets them ground her.

She focuses on the sound of their even breathing, the water dripping off her drenched clothes to land on a metal floor, the soft rumble of the shuttle under her feet.

She feels both very old, and very young.

She remembers feeling this way at nine years old, having watched her mother die.

It’s no wonder the feeling has returned to her now.

She opens her eyes.

Chirrut lets her pull away.

He rubs his thumbs over her cheeks.

“Jyn,” he breathes.

“He’s dead,” Jyn mumbles.

“Yes,” Chirrut agrees. “But not gone. Never gone.”

His eyes point meaningfully downward to the kyber crystal on her chest, and Jyn nods. She’s normally one to fervently agree with Chirrut on this quiet kind of spirituality, but at the moment, she’s having a hard time believing in anything.

Or anyone.

She turns around, and sees Cassian standing there, watching her.

His expression is unreadable.

He’s just as soaked as her, his hair sticking to his forehead, falling into his eyes. His light jacket is hanging from his hand, the shirt underneath barely any dryer. His knuckles are scratched, hands stained with blood, and there’s a hint of a bruise forming on his cheek.

Before she knows what she’s doing, she’s marching across the shuttle.

_Slap._

She slaps him, hard, across the cheek, and Cassian barely flinches.

His eyes close, briefly, opening again to look down at her.

“Jyn--”

She slaps him again, and he lets it happen, turning his head with her hit. She lifts her arm to deliver a third blow, but someone catches her wrist; she turns, and sees it’s Chirrut who’s grabbed her arm in a lightning-quick move.

“Let go,” she hisses.

Chirrut’s face is sorrowful. “You are in shock, little star. And you are looking for a place to put your grief, but you should consider somewhere other than your husband’s face.”

Jyn isn’t sure Chirrut is in the right on this, but she’s distracted by his nickname for her, one she’s heard a thousand times before, but one she thinks she has never fully heard until now.

_Little star._

_“Jyn. My Stardust.”_

Jyn closes her eyes for a moment, before training them on Cassian.

“He’s dead,” she says, the same words she’d said to Chirrut just seconds earlier turned into a rabid snarl now. “You must be thrilled. Your Alliance bombs did the job for you.”

Cassian looks at her.

“I could never be _thrilled_ about the death of someone you love,” he murmurs.

“Relieved, then. Satisfied. Validated, pleased, proud--”

“Apologetic.”

Jyn pauses.

She studies him, _really_ studies him, for the first time since he told her he was going to kill her father, back during their big verbal argument on the U-wing. The Cassian she had seen then had been one she didn’t know; one with cold eyes, a cruel twist to his mouth, stern shoulders, straight back. A killer; a lethal creature. Someone she didn’t _want_ to know.

The Cassian before her now looks devastated. Distraught. Lost.

And above all: apologetic.

She doesn’t know this Cassian, either.

“Why are you sorry?” she asks, more confused than anything else.

“I am sorry for many things,” Cassian says, “Including the fact that you even have to ask me that question.”

Chirrut and Baze seem to fade away, disappearing up the ladder to the second floor of the Imperial shuttle, the cockpit, where Bodhi and K-2SO can be heard quietly conversing.

Cassian turns away.

He goes to one of the boxes lining the walls, boxes Jyn recognizes from the U-wing, and he digs through one, procuring clothes. She automatically takes the pants and warm sweater he hands her, holding the dry clothes in numb hands, suddenly feeling how drenched and cold her clothes are under her rain poncho. She watches as he digs out dry clothes of his own, and begins to undress, carelessly throwing his rain-soaked clothes to the floor, moving with a calm detachment.

It is not the first time she’s watched him undress, or even the hundredth, but she bizarrely feels like this moment is more intimate than anything that might have come before it.

She follows his lead.

When they’re both dressed again, this time in clothes that are not frigid with rainwater, when Jyn’s shivers cease enough that she can breathe without hearing her teeth rattling around her skull, they look at each other.

Cassian is looking at her in an odd way; like he is seeing her for the first time.

“I was so unprepared for you,” he murmurs, and whatever Jyn had been expecting him to say; it wasn’t that.

She frowns. “What does that mean?”

“I used to think you were the one who wasn’t ready,” he says. “Because you were so alone; you’d lost your family. Your biological one, and then your chosen one, with the Partisans. And I encountered you, and I followed you, and I… I said I was offering you a home. And I meant that. Because the Alliance, it… I thought it was the only thing I could give you. Because it was the only thing I had.”

Jyn stares, and doesn’t interrupt.

Cassian’s eyes are shining, shining in a way she has only seen once before: on the day he thought she’d been killed by Zeferino, when he’d sobbed in sheer relief that she was still alive.

“After my parents died, and it was Nerezza, Zeferino and me,” Cassian continues. “Nerezza and I found a home within the Fest Rebellion. We had each other, but she… She would frequently remind me how that might not always be true, and so we had to learn to treat the Rebellion, and the cause, as our family. And she was right, of course. Because Zeferino left. And we lost so many friends, and mentors. And then I lost her. And all I had left was the fight. It felt like the only thing worth devoting myself to, the only constant I would ever have.”

He swallows, and he’s smiling, and looking away from her, and she doesn’t know what to do, what to say, because there are tears sliding down his face.

“And then you came along,” he says, laughing a little. “And you were so lost, and looking for _something._ For family, for a home. And I was too confident, and so proud, and I was twenty years old, and I thought I knew everything I needed to. I thought I could show you something worth living for, and fighting for. With the Alliance, and the cause. But you… You never were loyal to the cause, first. You were always more loyal to _me._ To Rogue One. To your _family._ And I… I was never like that. I didn’t… I think I forgot, a long time ago, that people could be like that.”

“What are you saying, Cassian?”

He takes a deep breath.

“The only time I ever loved you more than anything, more than the Alliance, more than the cause,” he says, “Is when I thought you were dead, on Coruscant. When I went back to claim your body, even as I knew I would likely be caught and killed as well. I still did it, because I refused to leave you there. I thought going back for you was what constituted love, because it was all I’d ever done with the cause, and the Alliance; I’ve never left it. But I realize now…”

Cassian finally meets her eyes, and she’s frozen, trying to understand what he is saying to her.

“I realize now, that what you have really wanted from me is my loyalty,” he says. “The only thing you wanted from me more than a refusal to abandon you, was a promise to never leave you in the first place. A promise to stay with you.”

 

* * *

 

Bodhi twists around in the pilot’s seat when Chirrut and Baze reach them.

The two Guardians look tired, their clothes heavy with rainwater. Baze immediately goes to the heater humming away in the corner, while Chirrut approaches Bodhi, laying a hand on his shoulder.

“Thank you,” Chirrut says, and Bodhi blinks.

“Uh… Yeah,” he manages. “You’re welcome.”

“I know we did not give you the… kindest of greetings,” Chirrut says, and Baze grins, wringing out his long dark hair. “But we are grateful for your help, and your guidance, in getting us to where we needed to go on Eadu; and on Jedha. So whatever you need, Bodhi Rook; we will get it for you.”

Now Bodhi _really_ doesn’t know what to say.

Even K-2SO seems startled.

“Bodhi is going to be our pilot,” the droid says. “I’ve already offered him the position.”

“I can get on board with that,” Baze mutters.

“What do you need?” Chirrut asks Bodhi.

Bodhi looks out the window, at the stars whipping past, carrying him to an unknown system, to an even lesser known future.

“I think,” Bodhi says, “I’d just like to help.”

Chirrut smiles.

K-2SO looks beyond him, to the open trap door leading to the main deck of the shuttle.

“Where are Cassian and Jyn?” K-2SO asks, and there’s clear animosity in his voice when he speaks, but Bodhi isn’t sure who it might be directed to. Cassian, for sending K-2SO to Jyn; or Jyn, for hitting Cassian.

“Fighting,” Baze says, leaning back against the wall, closing his eyes.

“Having a long overdue conversation,” Chirrut says.

 

* * *

 

_“Again.”_

_Hit, swipe, drop, kick._

_“Again.”_

_Hit, swipe, drop, kick._

_“Faster.”_

_Hit swipe drop kick_

_“Faster!”_

_Hit swipe drop kick_

_“Good.”_

_Nerezza smiles with a predatory grin._

_“Be brave, Cassi.”_

 

* * *

 

Cassian stands in front of Jyn now, and thinks of Nerezza’s lessons, of how, after her death, he threw himself headfirst into the cause, following a wayward Corellian traveler from Fest to Corellia, to join a rebellion in the heart of the galaxy, right in the thick of things. He thinks of how he gave himself over fully to the cause, by joining Draven’s secret black ops unit on Corellia, and continuing this work as the Alliance slowly took shape. He thinks of how he never imagined giving up the cruel work, the assassinations and murders, until he met Jyn.

He thinks of how meeting Jyn might have swayed him from his worst work, but didn’t sway him from anything else the cause might have asked of him.

He thinks of how, maybe, he never really left his most brutal self behind, considering how he didn’t even try to fight Draven on the order of killing Galen Erso. He thinks, perhaps, he was only ever waiting for an excuse to return to the thankless, dark work he’d participated in for so long.

He thinks he saw Jyn’s light, and only wanted to be near it.

That he saw her light, and decided it was nothing that could be found in him, and so he would never be able to stay with her. At some point, something would separate them.

Maybe he always knew it was going to be him.

Because Jyn; she’s never left him. Not once.

“I’m sorry,” he says, and Jyn stares at him.

She looks almost frightened, and he thinks he’s never been more ashamed.

She’s looking at him like he’s a stranger; no, worse than that, because Jyn isn’t afraid of strangers.

She’s looking at him like he is some kind of ghost. Something she has never seen before. Something she never imagined seeing.

“I know that doesn’t mean anything,” Cassian adds. “Especially now. I know… I know you’re going to go. And I understand. You have been… I never deserved you, and I always knew that, but I… I believed I didn’t deserve you because you were so bright, and I wasn’t. I automatically saw us as two very different people, and I never once… I forgot that it was possible for me to change. I forgot that I _could_ change, for you, if I decided to. And that, I think… was a cruelty. You’ve asked so little of me, and I failed you, every time.”

Jyn is now staring resolutely at the cold metal floor of the ship.

Cassian’s hands are tight in fists at his sides.

“Please, say something,” he says, and he knows he’s begging.

“I don’t know what to say,” Jyn mumbles.

“What do you want, Jyn?”

Her head jerks up, and that fire, the wildfire he saw in her the day they met, is back again.

“I want my father to be alive,” Jyn hisses. “I want him here, on the way to the Alliance, rather than lying on Eadu, killed _by_ the Alliance. I want… I want him to smile at Bodhi, and to frown at Kay, and to talk to Chirrut, and laugh with Baze. I want him to meet you, and I want him to tease us. I want to show him Yavin 4, and I want to hear his voice, and I…”

She trails off, eyes wet with tears, and Cassian forces himself to meet her gaze.

“I’m sorry,” he says, again, because he can think of nothing else to say.

He can’t bring her father back.

He can only wish, silently, that there was a way for him to take his place.

“Alliance bombs killed him,” Jyn whispers, her voice a hiss. _“Alliance_ bombs.”

She’s staring at him, accusation making her tone scorching, and he nods.

“I told Draven we were going to Eadu,” he confirms. “That Galen could be found there. I won’t deny it; I told him that. And when the U-wing crashed, we lost communication with Yavin 4. They must have assumed we’d been shot down, with no survivors. So Draven called in an airstrike.”

He can picture it, all the little steps that led to this calamity.

“Why didn’t you have anyone try to reach the Alliance, to tell them we’d made it?” Jyn snaps. “Baze might have been able to make some kind of radio, or Kay--”

She breaks off, pale skin turning impossibly whiter.

Cassian closes his eyes.

“Oh,” Jyn breathes, the memory of his original plan returning. “You… You were going to have Kay try to get through.”

“Yes.”

“And then I… I told Kay to steal a ship, instead.”

“This doesn’t change anything,” Cassian interjects. “I was still the one who told Draven where Galen was. I was the one who failed to contact Yavin 4, and so it’s my fault that squadron came in--”

Jyn shakes her head.

“But I had an opportunity to prevent it,” she whispers.

“Kay probably wouldn’t have gotten through--”

_“But you don’t know that!”_

Jyn is breathing hard, like she’s been running for miles. There is pure desperation all over her, from her heaving chest, to her quivering hands, to her wide eyes, to her trembling mouth.

“Don’t blame yourself for this,” Cassian says, his voice harder than it’s been since this conversation started. “This is not your fault.”

“If I hadn’t joined the Alliance, he might still be alive,” Jyn murmurs, and she begins to move, pacing the width of the small shuttle space, deep in thought. “Saw could have gotten the message from Bodhi, and then… Saw might have been able to find me, wherever I was…”

“Where would you have been?”

Jyn throws up her arms. “Some Outer Rim watering hole? Prison? I don’t know. If Saw had gotten the message to me, then maybe the Alliance would never have gotten involved.”

“We might have,” Cassian says, and both he and Jyn note how he automatically includes himself as part of the Alliance, even in this hypothetical scenario. “Galen was on the Alliance’s radar before you joined. We would have monitored all we could regarding him.”

“So you would still have killed him.”

Cassian swallows. “Maybe.”

“Even though _you_ didn’t kill him today.”

He says nothing.

Jyn eyes him.

“Why did you not kill my father, Cassian?”

“Because I didn’t want to,” Cassian says. “Because I saw him do an act of goodness, when he tried to save the lives of his workers. Because I want to be a better man. Because you asked me, recently, if I ever wanted anything more, and I realized that I did. And I thought… that maybe we could. Have more. Maybe we still have time.”

_“You still have time, Cassian Andor.”_

He wonders if Chirrut foresaw this outcome, if such a thing is possible.

He wouldn’t be surprised if this was the case.

“I thought you were going to kill him,” Jyn says. “I really did.”

“I really did, too.”

“I wanted to kill _you.”_

“I would have let you.”

Jyn pauses, thinking this over.

“When you didn’t try to stop me from hitting you on the ridge,” she recalls. “And how you let me slap you just now, until Chirrut stopped me.”

Cassian’s cheek is a bright red with a ripening bruise, and he watches her stare hard at it, and he wonders if she remembers putting it there, on their fight on the ridge. If Zeferino managed to injure him--and he’s sure he did--then he did so in a less obvious way.

He nods. “I deserve much worse than that.”

Jyn eyes him.

“Do you never feel like you deserve something _good,_ Cass?”

 

* * *

 

“What’s it like?”

“Green,” Chirrut says. “Warm. Highlands. I hear there are small outlets of water near base, but I have not had time to find them. Ask the Captain.”

Bodhi frowns. “Why?”

“He likes to walk, and climb, in his spare time,” K-2SO intones. “I don’t understand it. But I believe it has something to do with his childhood on Fest.”

“Mountainous, cold planet,” Baze grunts. “Makes sense.”

Bodhi spends a second considering Fest, and then decides it isn’t worth it. He’d much prefer to picture Yavin 4, aided by the description offered by Chirrut.

“I can’t wait to see the base,” he says.

“We will protect you,” Baze says, which isn’t something Bodhi wanted to hear.

“Cassian will have to call us in,” K-2SO notes. “The Alliance will try to shoot down an Imperial shuttle.”

Bodhi wonders how he failed to consider this. “Right.”

“It will be fine,” Chirrut says, dismissively. He twirls his lightbow around in his hands, in a movement so fast Bodhi can’t track it. He watches instead as the older man bows his head.

“I am one with the force, and the force is with me… I am one with the force, and the force is with me…”

Bodhi blinks, and remembers being a child on Jedha, and hearing the Guardians of the Whills reciting this very same prayer.

He swallows a lump in his throat.

The loss of Jedha burns.

 

* * *

 

Jyn thinks Cassian has never looked older than he does now.

He’s twenty-six, making him four years older than her, but he is still very much a young man. He hasn’t changed all that much since they first met, six years earlier, but there is something in his face now that makes him look almost ancient.

He’s regret, personified, she thinks.

“I’ve never been anything more than what the cause asks me to be,” he murmurs.

“And what is that, exactly?”

“An assassin,” he says, sharply, looking at her, an eyebrow raised, the recent events heavy between them. “A murderer. A thief. A liar. A spy. A bomber. A--”

“Kay’s teacher.”

He pauses, and Jyn continues.

“Kay-Tuesso’s teacher,” she says. “Baze’s leader. Chirrut’s friend. My… My husband.”

“I’ve been a terrible husband.”

“But you’ve still been my husband.”

Cassian studies her, and his brown eyes are sad, so sad. “Do you still want me to be?”

She feels tears prick her eyes.

“I don’t know,” she admits.

Cassian looks entirely unsurprised at this admission.

“It’s your choice,” he says. “I’ll… Whatever you need from me. Whoever you need me to be.”

“I don’t know what I need from you,” Jyn says. “The only thing I know I need is…”

She thinks of her father, of her father’s final words, of the last request he has given to her. Of the thing she can do for him. Of the way she can redeem him.

“I need to steal the Death Star plans,” Jyn says. “I need to go to Scarif, and I need to steal those plans. And then… Then we destroy the Death Star.”

A small smile grows on Cassian’s face.

“Okay,” he murmurs. “Then I’ll help you. In any way that I can.”

 

* * *

 

They call down the rest of Rogue One.

Baze looks exhausted, promptly sliding to the floor, leaning his head against the metal wall. Chirrut looks thoughtful, twirling his lightbow, head bent in concentration. K-2SO stands awkwardly, as he always does, hovering near the ladder, waiting for an excuse to return to the upper deck.

And Bodhi fidgets in a corner, clearly unsure of his status, of his place on this team.

Jyn glances at Cassian, and he shrugs, gesturing for her to speak.

He’s given her the floor before, but never in a position like this, where she is the one to announce and orchestrate a mission.

She swallows, and surveys the team.

“I want to go to Scarif, and steal the Death Star plans,” she says.

K-2SO visibly startles at this announcement, while Bodhi stares. Baze does not react, but Chirrut nods, evidently expecting these words from Jyn.

“Has the Alliance authorized this mission?” K-2SO asks, glancing at Cassian.

“No,” Jyn says. “No, they haven’t. They don’t even know about it. We… _I_ will tell them, and try to make a case for it. Bodhi will help--” Bodhi’s eyes widen at Jyn’s volunteering of him, but he doesn’t argue “--But if the Alliance isn’t convinced, I want to go anyway. With or without their support.”

“But we could use their support,” Baze intones.

Jyn allows this.

“We could,” she agrees. “And that’s why we aren’t going straight to Scarif right now.”

“Even without an… official go-ahead from the Alliance, we might be able to find a few more allies on Yavin 4,” Cassian notes. “Volunteers only. And additional supplies, of course.”

They all glance at the crates stacked haphazardly against the wall, the meager remnants of their lost U-wing.

“Rogue One,” Bodhi murmurs, a little smile brightening his face, making him look like a teenager. “I get where you lot got that name.”

“This will really make us infamous,” Baze says, with an amused grin.

 

* * *

 

While Chirrut, Baze, and Jyn talk strategy and grief, and K-2SO interjects with his own concerns about Scarif, Cassian climbs to the upper level of the ship, Bodhi at his heels.

Without instruction, Cassian sits in the co-pilot’s seat.

Bodhi hesitates.

“Um, if you want to pilot--”

“I’m very fine with you flying, Bodhi,” Cassian replies, and Bodhi nods.

“Right, then.”

He sits.

Cassian lets himself lean back, resting his feet on the front dash of the shuttle, watching the stars as they hurtle past.

_“I need to steal the Death Star plans,” Jyn says. “I need to go to Scarif, and I need to steal those plans. And then… Then we destroy the Death Star.”_

_“Okay,” he murmurs. “Then I’ll help you. In any way that I can.”_

He’s done running his own agenda, and leaving her behind.

For the first time since he ran after her on Takodana, he’ll follow her now.

He’ll follow her to the end.

“So, uh… You’re really related to Zeferino Andor?”

Cassian turns his head.

Bodhi’s eyes are down, locked on the controls before him, but his shoulders are tense.

“He is my brother,” Cassian confirms.

_Blood brothers._

More now than they ever used to be, Cassian thinks.

“Huh,” Bodhi mutters. “How did… I’m sorry, just forget I--”

“Our mother died when I was seven, and he was eleven,” Cassian says.

Serafima was caught in the crossfire of a street battle between rebels and stormtroopers.

Her seven-year-old son was holding her hand when she was shot. He watched her die. He clung to her, in a snowdrift, covering her body, trying to protect her, even as he knew there wasn’t really a point anymore.

“Our sister was thirteen,” Cassian continues. “By all accounts, we should have been sent to an orphanage, as we had no living relatives; but the orphanages on Fest were overcrowded with war orphans, and we slipped through the cracks. My sister and I were already involved with the Fest Rebellion, and so the leaders took us in. And my brother managed to get a spot in a pre-Imperial Military Academy school on Fest.”

“He was an Imp, even as a kid?”

“Very much so,” Cassian confirms. “For reasons I’ve never known.”

After moving in with the Fest Rebellion, Cassian’s time with Zeferino was minimal. They would only meet occasionally for lunch, where Zeferino would ask Cassian how he was doing, and what he was up to. Cassian was a child, but aware enough of the war and politics to know he couldn’t divulge details of his work; so instead, he mostly talked about Nerezza. He talked about how she was teaching him so many things: how to survive, and fight, and steal, and pickpocket, and hide.

He talked about how cold the Fest Rebellion base was, how he woke up to so much gray and frost, how he was learning to find satisfaction and warmth in that.

Zeferino’s face would be hard as stone, and so Cassian learned to keep quiet about his life, and little by little, the brothers stopped speaking.

Zeferino shipped out to a military academy in the Inner Rim.

Cassian and Nerezza rose through the ranks of the Fest Rebellion.

And then, six years after their mother died, Zeferino returned to Fest, and killed Nerezza.

Cassian thinks he lost both his siblings that day.

Cassian is now twenty-six years old, and Zeferino is thirty.

“He became the senator of Fest about… six years ago,” Cassian says, remembering coming across the news bulletin while preparing for a mission to Kessel. He’d put out a tracker on Zeferino’s name as soon as he knew how, wanting to be kept aware of his brother’s movements; but he’d never imagined hearing that Zeferino had retired early from the Imperial Military to go into _politics,_ of all things.

But Zeferino has always been interested in power, so perhaps this isn’t very surprising.

Bodhi nods.

“Chirrut said he was there, today,” he says. “On Eadu.”

Cassian doesn’t think anyone actually _told_ Chirrut this, but finds he isn’t astonished in the least that Chirrut has figured it out anyway.

“He was.”

“That, uh… Must’ve been difficult?”

Cassian wonders if this is Bodhi’s attempt at small talk, and wonders why Bodhi thinks they need small talk.

“I was going to kill him,” Cassian says, quite calmly.

He remembers Zeferino’s neck under his hands.

He remembers the thrill of thinking he was actually going to do it, that he was going to avenge Nerezza, at long last.

“What stopped you?” Bodhi wonders.

“Jyn,” Cassian says.

Jyn’s voice, calling his name.

Jyn; someone who Zeferino once saved, when he definitely didn’t need to.

_His brother nods. “I see. You can go now.”_

_“Why?” Cassian asks._

_“I have not yet had the opportunity to save my sister-in-law’s life. And as for you, well… I should give you a wedding present, should I not?”_

Even then, Cassian knew it was a lie. But his desperation to escape, to run with Jyn to safety, had overcome his need to demand a truthful explanation.

Cassian has spent the past six months trying to figure out what the truth was.

Why Zeferino would have saved Jyn, not to mention _him._

Zeferino hadn’t killed him when he’d killed Nerezza.

And he’d freed him four years earlier, when Cassian had been caught by the Empire on Mandalore, just months before he met Jyn on Takodana. At the time, Zeferino had said freeing him was a gift, from Zeferino to his baby brother.

And then he’d let Cassian go _again,_ with Jyn at his side.

Three times, he’s cheated death at Zeferino’s hands.

It doesn’t make any sense.

_“I do not understand you.”_

_“You never have, Cassi.”_

Cassian supposes it doesn’t really matter.

He and Zeferino fought tonight, and it was a fight that would have ended with one of them dead.

And besides.

Zeferino has helped the Empire build the Death Star.

_“Maybe there can still be goodness in Imperials.”_

It’s possible Jyn was right about her father, about her father having some goodness in him, when he tried to save the lives of his workers on Eadu.

But Zeferino…

_Seventeen-year-old Zeferino, clad in the gray uniform of an Imperial officer, lifts the blaster._

_Cassian watches in horror._

_“No!”_

_The red light flies through the gray air, slamming into Nerezza’s chest._

_She falls._

Nerezza taught him everything he knows. How to fight, how to survive, how to run, how to scavenge for food, how to keep warm, how to lie, how to cheat. All of it. He would not have made it this far without her teachings, and her support.

_“Be brave, Cassi.”_

He followed her everywhere.

She was an inferno, and after she died, he looked everywhere for someone with a blaze that could match hers.

Jyn is close, though her fire is a wildfire. Not as consuming as Nerezza’s, nor as annihilating; but filled with sparks, and brilliantly bright.

Cassian leans back, and watches the fiery stars.

 

* * *

 

Chirrut’s hand is warm in hers.

Jyn holds tightly to it.

The other she has wrapped around the kyber crystal hanging from her neck.

Her knuckles brush against the marriage pendant next to it, and she flinches.

She pictures flinging it off, and throwing it away.

Chirrut’s hand tightens around hers.

They’ve been flying for hours.

K-2SO has long disappeared back up the ladder, to sit with Bodhi and Cassian. Baze is fast asleep, snoring up a storm, sprawled in an uncomfortable position.

And Chirrut and Jyn sit in the calm, in companionable silence.

Chirrut rubs his thumb over hers, and breaks their silence.

“You are so sad,” he murmurs.

“I have a lot to be sad about,” Jyn mumbles. “You do, too.”

“You are not grieving only the loss of your father.”

She knows Chirrut is right, knows she should probably talk about this, knows she needs to understand what will happen next, but finds the words get caught in her throat.

“You do not have to lose him, too,” Chirrut whispers, and Jyn jerks.

“He made his choice,” she hisses, not needing to ask which _him_ Chirrut means.

“He did make a choice,” Chirrut agrees. “But you are neglecting to understand what that choice was.”

She scoffs. “To not kill my father? Sorry if I’m not so enthused--”

“To choose you.”

_“It’s not that I think you’re going to leave me,” she says. “It’s that I worry you’re going to put the cause before me. Before us.”_

Jyn shakes her head, clearing her mind of her earlier words, whispered to Cassian, an admission of a lifelong fear. Her rabid, primal fear, of being left behind and alone. Of losing him to something that was not death, but maybe just as bad.

“No one just… just _changes_ like that,” she insists.

Chirrut shrugs. “Perhaps he does.”

“Cassian’s been in this fight for almost longer than I’ve been _alive--”_

“He’s spent half his life waiting for an opportunity to kill his brother,” Chirrut says. “And when he had a golden opportunity to do so, he stopped. Because you called for him, and he went to you.”

He picked her.

For the first time; she watched him pick _her._

“That was choosing me over his own agenda,” she says. “I’m not so sure he’ll do it again if it means disobeying Alliance orders.”

He didn’t decide not to kill Galen for _her._

Sure, he had good reasons for deciding not to; but none of them were simply that she had asked, had _begged him,_ not to do it.

She can understand it, at least.

But she isn’t sure she can forgive it yet.

Chirrut, thankfully, says nothing.

 

* * *

 

Yavin 4 is just as green as Bodhi had heard.

He practically floats out of the pilot’s seat, he’s so eager to see as much of the moon as he can.

Cassian, at his side, is calling the Alliance.

“Do not shoot us down,” he mutters, pressing the headphones to his ears, frowning so deeply Bodhi almost worries it’s going to permanently mark his face.

“Our odds of being shot down by the Alliance, due to us arriving in an unknown Imperial shuttle, are--”

“Sssh,” Cassian hisses, waving a hand at K-2SO, who mercifully shuts up.

Bodhi grips the seat under him.

Cassian listens, and then he smiles.

“Rogue One, calling for permission to land,” he says. “Yes--Yes, that’s us--It’s… Talro, is that you? It’s a--It’s a long story, I--Can you just--Good.”

Cassian looks up, giving Bodhi a thumbs up and a grimace.

K-2SO gives him directions, standing at Bodhi’s shoulder, as he guides them down over endless green forests, past strange sand-colored buildings, towards an obstructed airfield.

Bodhi takes a deep breath.

The Alliance awaits them.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm not entirely happy with this chapter, but I believe I got through everything I needed to for this part of the story, so that is enough.
> 
> Jyn and Cassian's "hypothetical" scenario is really just ROGUE ONE the film; Galen dies there, too. Baze's comment that Rogue One will "really be infamous" is a kind of "foreshadowing" to how Rogue One inspires the name of Rogue Squadron; it occurred to me, while writing this, that Jyn might feel very conflicted about this considering an Alliance Squadron killed her father.
> 
> Italics partially from BLOOD BROTHERS, which i recommend reading to understand more about Cassian and Zeferino.
> 
> Anyway. Hopefully doing an "every other day" update schedule.
> 
> Today is the one year anniversary of Carrie Fisher's death, meaning I will be entirely useless today. If you read UNCURLING LIFELINES, you understand why. I also spent time yesterday polishing up my "Eulogy" for her (linked below, because it's important to me) rather than really working on this chapter. It's also a year ago today that I really started writing GRAY AREAS, which was a fic about Cassian that I wrote from a place of grief: about someone who lived in the gray for so long, it became difficult to remember gray was not all there is, and how he grew to love and appreciate the gray, and to find light there. That's the kind of thing Carrie gave to me. And so the eulogy is about that, but also the last word I ever heard in her voice. (And you, if you're here, know what it is.)
> 
> [The Last Word](http://www.theputterer.tumblr.com/post/168999963820/the-last-word)


	8. Preparation

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “The most rebellious thing you ever did was marry Jyn Erso,” he says.

Cassian disembarks first, hands raised in a gesture of surrender.

He is unsurprised to be greeted by what looks to be an entire squad of soldiers, their blasters raised and ready, eyeing him with trepidation, and clear disbelief. He can’t blame them for this; it might have been his voice, with Alliance clearance codes, asking for permission to land, but he’s still walking out of an Imperial shuttle, and the squad of soldiers facing him are soldiers he doesn’t know very well. They don’t know that he’d rather die than bring about an Imperial invasion.

But there is one soldier there who should know this.

Draven straightens, cocking an eyebrow. “Captain Andor.”

“General,” Cassian replies, lowering his arms. “Nice welcoming party.”

Draven shrugs, unrepentant. “You know the protocol.”

Cassian does know the protocol.

Still; he’s a little offended.

Jyn walks down the ramp behind him, eyeing Draven with an open distrust, and even some loathing. Draven meets her gaze head-on, rising to the challenge. Neither of them offer the other so much as a hello. Cassian hadn’t really expected them to.

Chirrut and Baze disembark next, Baze looking distinctly unimpressed at the welcoming committee, Chirrut looking uncharacteristically solemn.

K-2SO follows them, expressing no alarm at the blasters leveled at him; he’s a former Imperial droid who has visited multiple rebellions across the galaxy. This is almost his default welcome.

Last, standing exposed in the mouth of the Imperial shuttle, is Bodhi, hands raised, eyes wide, Imperial jumpsuit prominently on display.

The squad of Alliance soldiers return to their attack-ready positions, training blasters on Bodhi, hissing orders that he freeze. Bodhi complies without hesitation, or protest.

Before Cassian can turn to Draven and explain, K-2SO steps forward, placing himself between the soldiers and Bodhi.

“Bodhi Rook is a friend and ally,” K-2SO announces, to general astonishment. “He helped us find Saw Gerrera on Jedha, and helped us locate the Imperial research facility on Eadu, and he helped us steal this shuttle when our U-wing crashed. We would not be here without his assistance.”

There isn’t much to add to that.

Draven stares at Cassian, who shrugs.

“He isn’t wrong,” he says, though, technically, Bodhi didn’t really help them _find_ Saw Gerrera. But K-2SO’s general point still stands.

“You still have some explaining to do,” Draven notes, and Cassian knows that’s fair.

Jyn steps forward.

“Is Commander Mothma on base?” she asks.

“Yes,” Draven replies, slowly, clearly unsure where Jyn is going with this.

“Good,” Jyn says. “I need to meet with her. And call a meeting with all the other Alliance councilors who are also on base.”

Draven stares. “You can’t just--”

“We wouldn’t if it wasn’t critical,” Cassian interjects.

Draven looks at him.

Cassian meets his eyes, making his stance clear: he’s on Jyn’s side, and they _need_ to have this meeting.

“You have a _lot_ of explaining to do,” Draven says.

 

* * *

 

Bodhi thinks his heart is threatening to exit his chest.

He fights to control his breathing, twisting his hands together, sinking his boots into the soft brown dirt of the base on Yavin 4.

He still can’t quite believe he’s here, that he’s made it.

 _Maybe,_ he thinks, _This can begin to make things right._

He looks up at the sound of footsteps, and sighs in relief at the sight of Jyn, carrying a bundle in her arms.

“We’ve got a meeting,” she says, with an elated grin.

Bodhi has no idea how she’s managed this; K-2SO had expressed skepticism that Jyn would be able to cajole the Alliance leaders into listening to a pitch from her, a lowly Sergeant on a loose cannon of a team. But Cassian had noted that Mon Mothma _(the actual Mon Mothma,_ and Bodhi can’t wait to see her, this woman who worked to unhinge the Empire from within, and now runs a whole organization devoted to its ruin) has long had a bit of a soft spot for Jyn, admiring her spirit and resilience.

Still; Cassian put the odds at fifty-fifty.

Bodhi doesn’t ask Jyn how she’s managed to get the meeting.

All that matters is that she did.

“Here,” Jyn says, offering the tan bundle in her arms. He takes it, confused, unfurling it.

It’s a light brown tunic, not unlike the one he wore (and lost, in the firefight between the Partisans and stormtroopers) on Jedha. But this tunic is lighter, and clearly second-hand, and carries the emblem of the Rebel Alliance on its shoulder.

Unexpectedly, Bodhi finds himself choking up.

He looks up at Jyn, who smiles at the emotion in his eyes.

“Thanks,” he manages.

“You’re welcome, Bodhi,” Jyn replies, and the kindness that lights up her face reminds him of Galen.

It makes him ache.

“I’m, um… Sorry,” Bodhi says. “About Galen. I’m sorry for your loss.”

She blinks.

“Oh,” she murmurs. “Yes. Thank you.”

“I liked him a lot.”

Galen was always kind to him, a thing that was most unusual in a place as cold and cruel as an Imperial facility. Bodhi distinctly remembers every act and gesture of kindness, and is grateful for all of them. When Galen asked him to help him, following months of Bodhi’s quiet uncertainty about what the Empire was doing and if he could keep working for it, Bodhi immediately agreed to do what he could.

A kindness, repaid, and expanded.

But Jyn Erso, standing before him now; she isn’t Galen.

She’s more.

 

* * *

 

“What do you think they will say?”

At Baze’s question, Chirrut smiles, and shrugs.

“We both already know what they will say,” he replies.

Baze sighs.

Chirrut adjusts his position on the crate of dynamite, gathering himself into a more relaxed position, getting ready to meditate.

Beside him, Baze tips his head up, and feels the sun on his face.

 

* * *

 

Cassian stands in the back of the jam-packed briefing room, as Mothma calls the meeting to order.

The meeting; _Jyn’s_ meeting.

He’s never been so proud of her.

He listens as Mothma speaks, reminding the crowd of what is at stake, telling them the Empire has created the ultimate weapon. He watches as Bodhi is brought to the front, and not kindly interrogated by the gathered Alliance leaders, as Bodhi simultaneously endures taunts and jeers from anonymous voices lost in the crowd.

But Bodhi remains standing tall, and answers each question smoothly, without hesitation.

Cassian is proud of him, too.

Mothma eventually steps back, and Jyn is brought forward.

There is some confusion among the assembled rebels, many of whom know Jyn, some of whom have worked alongside her, and most of whom have seen her around base. Cassian sees the rebels straighten, giving Jyn more consideration than they had Bodhi, because they like and trust her more.

But their confidence in her wavers as she speaks.

As she tells them about her Imperialist father, the scientist who created and built the Death Star. As she talks about what his weapon did to Jedha. As she describes the way to defeat it, as told to her by a hologram of her father. As she insists it is a message worth trusting.

When she outlines an assault on Scarif, an Imperial stronghold, it’s clear.

She’s lost most of the room.

Whatever the rebels may think of Jyn, personally--and Cassian is sure they must mostly think well of her, even though she’s part of a team that has a reputation of defiance and independence--her connection to, and the obvious grief in her voice for, the Imperialist who created the most awful of weapons, is too big an obstacle to overcome.

Trusting Imperials; it’s a leap of faith not many rebels are willing to attempt.

It is a belief Cassian has held for half his life, since he watched his brother murder his sister.

As Baze told Bodhi on Jedha: Cassian has always been more Alliance than the rest of them.

He sees, now, how damaging that perspective can be.

It disavows hope.

“Rebellions are _built_ on hope,” Jyn says, nearly begs, glaring at the Alliance councilors around her, and his heart breaks at how she tries to employ his earlier words now.

_“Rebellions are built on hope, Jyn. I am not.”_

They are going to fail her, like Cassian has failed her, so many times.

He might not have been built on hope, but he was built on devotion. And he can turn that devotion to Jyn, and her hope, and that can be enough for him. It’s all he has left to offer her.

He stirs when someone brushes his side, and turns to see Draven.

Cassian had already met with Draven, giving a verbal report of the events as they transpired on Jedha, and Eadu. Draven had acknowledged his explanation of the U-wing’s crash, and the loss of their communications with Yavin 4. He’d taken note of Cassian’s list of the recognizable Imperialists on Eadu (including Zeferino Andor, and the additional information of the man in white, who Jyn identified as being called Krennic, who she also confirmed was dead) and the general outline of the research facility’s capabilities.

Cassian then told Draven that Galen Erso was killed by the Alliance bombs.

And Draven had studied him, and Cassian knew the question Draven was considering asking:

_Why didn’t you do it?_

Cassian was ready, with multiple excuses: he hadn’t found a good vantage point before the Alliance got there. He lost his rifle in the crash. He was unable to recognize Galen Erso through the rain.

Anything, besides the truth.

_Because I didn’t want to._

He wasn’t sure what Draven would make of the truth.

But Draven didn’t ask.

And Cassian suspects Draven already knows.

So when Draven turns to him, in the middle of Jyn’s rapidly deteriorating meeting, and asks to see him outside, he goes.

He knows he wouldn’t be much help to her in there.

Cassian might be a respected, longtime Alliance soldier, but the fact remains: he’s married to Jyn. And enough of the soldiers will suspect him of picking her side solely because she has asked him to, that his support would only cause her support to erode.

It’s the first time his marriage to Jyn has felt like a disadvantage.

With the heavy irony being that before this week, he wouldn’t have chosen Jyn’s side over what the Alliance asked of him.

He follows Draven outside, under the bloody orange sun that’s beginning to set over Yavin 4.

Draven studies him.

“You’re a good soldier, Andor,” he says, somewhat out of the blue.

“I know,” Cassian replies, because he has always known this.

He’s a good soldier; he’d do anything that the cause, the Alliance, _Draven,_ asked of him.

“You’re a good soldier,” Draven repeats, “Right up until you are not.”

Cassian looks at him.

Draven has known Cassian since the latter was fourteen, since he was still a child, when he carried the heavy loss of Nerezza on his shoulders, when he was eager to bite and tear and kill any part of the Empire he could reach. He’d encountered Draven in the Corellian Resistance, and Draven had recognized Cassian’s rage and desire for revenge, and recruited him for his secret black ops team.

Cassian relished the work; it felt like he was accomplishing _something._

It gave him a reason to get up in the morning. It helped him feel like he was advancing Nerezza’s own work, her goals, and abetting her memory, and giving her a kind of legacy.

Cassian has never resented Draven for the work Draven ordered him to do. He went into his unit knowing what would be expected of him. He did it very willingly, and with determination. He understands why it needed to be done.

And then he understood that it was not something _he_ _needed_ to be doing.

“I know,” Cassian repeats, to Draven’s statement.

“I suspected, when you left the team,” Draven says. “That this day would come. The day when you’d disobey, and choose a new path. Your creation of _Rogue One_ only added to this belief. I knew it wasn’t far away. I suppose I should not be so surprised that it’s today.”

“Yes,” Cassian agrees.

Draven has known him for nearly half his life.

Of course he has Cassian (mostly) figured out.

Draven does not look quite resigned; perhaps only sorry.

“The most rebellious thing you ever did was marry Jyn Erso,” he says.

Cassian thinks this is true, too. He thinks he always, subconsciously, knew it was.

“You say that like it’s something to regret,” he murmurs.

“I regret that the Alliance lost one of its most valuable assets,” Draven says. “I regret that you resigned from my unit.”

“Do you regret letting me?”

Draven only looks at him.

They both know the answer.

“When you came back from Takodana, with Jyn Erso in tow,” Draven remarks, “I didn’t suspect any of this. I only saw a sixteen-year-old girl interested in becoming a soldier for the Corellian Resistance. An already skilled fighter with the kind of determination and bloodlust we needed. Yet, you still campaigned for her; you asked she be brought in, and you… You did not try to convince me that she should join our unit. I think that should have been my first clue that there was something about her you found… special.”

“She’s better than you and me.”

Draven eyes him.

“You know I don’t see it that way,” he says.

“I know,” Cassian confirms. “But I’ve always seen it that way.”

“I figured that out too late.” Draven smiles. “When you told me you’d married her, I didn’t fully understand it. _Why,_ exactly. I knew you were… Together.”

He looks a bit uncomfortable at this, but Cassian isn’t; the Alliance requires its soldiers to inform a superior if they’re seeing a fellow soldier, and he followed this rule, telling Draven just days after he and Jyn talked it out, when she was eighteen and he was twenty-two.

“I thought that was enough,” Draven continues. “So when you said you’d married her to give her legal scandocs with your surname, a surname that did not carry the stigma of Erso, it made sense. It seemed like the logical, even calculated, thing to do. I could understand that.”

Draven, Cassian suspects, has never really loved anyone; romantically, that is. In all the years Cassian has known him, there has been no hint of a relationship, present or past. This was also the story of Cassian’s life; until Jyn came along.

If Jyn had not come along, it possibly would have been the total story of his life.

“But that wasn’t the case,” Draven says, and it is less a question and more a statement.

“It was part of the case,” Cassian allows. “But only just.”

“You’ll follow her, now.”

“I should have started following her years ago.”

“Then you are lost.”

Draven doesn’t sound accusing; but he now looks resigned.

“I like to think I am… Not lost,” Cassian says. “Not anymore.”

Draven considers this.

“I suppose,” he allows, though Cassian is sure he doesn’t quite believe it.

“You said the most rebellious thing I ever did was marry Jyn,” Cassian says. “It follows, then, that I continue to rebel. With her, and for her.”

“She _is_ a rebel.”

“Always has been,” Cassian says, and he smiles.

And he is, too.

He’s just found _someone_ to rebel for.

“I could ground you,” Draven says. “Order you to go on a new mission right now, on your own. Forbid you to do whatever wild plan it is that Erso is currently pitching at the councilors. Dissolve Rogue One. Have you court-martialed.”

“You could,” Cassian says, even though he actually hasn’t really done anything (yet) to merit court-martialing.

“But none of that would matter.”

Cassian shrugs. “You could still give it a shot.”

Draven could ground him, and lock him up, but they both know Cassian would break out.

It’s the kind of thing he’s done before. Once or twice.

The kind of thing Draven himself taught him how to do.

And Cassian wouldn’t let such a ridiculous thing as being _grounded_ stop him from following Jyn to Scarif.

“I’m not in the habit of advocating for a lost cause,” Draven says.

Cassian; Cassian is the lost cause, in Draven’s eyes.

And the plan to go to Scarif, to steal the Death Star plans; it’s quite possibly a suicide mission.

A lost cause, in every sense.

“Maybe,” Cassian murmurs, “A lost cause is the best cause to fight for.”

He doesn’t shake Draven’s hand.

He only turns, and walks away.

He feels the Alliance fall away from him, too.

He finally becomes the person he was meant to be.

Cassian Andor.

A better man.

 

* * *

 

Chirrut looks up when Cassian approaches him and Baze.

He notes how the Captain walks with a newfound confidence; it almost seems peaceful. And the Force, moving around him; that’s different, too.

“You’re lighter, Captain,” Chirrut comments.

Cassian pauses. “Lighter.”

“Gray,” Chirrut says, as this is something he has told Cassian before, and given the other man pause. “But lighter.”

Cassian considers this. “Okay.”

Baze shrugs. “Sounds better.”

“What is the plan?” Chirrut asks.

“They’re going to tell Jyn no,” Cassian says.

Baze sighs. “We already knew that.”

Chirrut nods. “As I said: what is the plan?”

He doesn’t need sight to see the smile that grows on the Captain’s face.

 

* * *

 

Jyn is _furious._

She stalks out of the briefing room, ignoring the beseeching and apologetic gaze from Mothma, the thoughtful frown from Bail Organa, and most of all, the satisfied exchanges between the other Alliance councilors.

It’s _possible,_ she thinks, that she will look back on this later and understand why they have made the decision they did.

She doubts this.

So for now: she’s furious.

She only has one more option. One more hope.

But Rogue One is not in the hangar.

“Where the hell are they?” she mutters, spinning in a circle, looking around for any sign of her team.

Bodhi, who’d followed her out of the briefing room, looks similarly confused.

“Do you have a meeting place?” he wonders. “Maybe the shuttle?”

Jyn frowns, because she supposes it’s possible Baze, Chirrut, Kay, and Cassian went to wait in the shuttle; but wouldn’t they want to plan ahead of time, and gather the supplies they need? Wouldn’t they need some sort of plan before taking off?

But that doesn’t really seem like Rogue One.

They have been known to leap blindly into the unknown.

“We can check,” she says, and Bodhi matches her step-by-step outside the hangar.

The Imperial shuttle has been parked a little ways away from the x-wings and U-wings and other ships that make up the Alliance fleet. It looks very isolated, and lonely, powered down on the tarmac, only a handful of lights illuminating the inside of the lowered ramp.

But Jyn can see movement within.

She slows as she approaches the ship, coming to a stop at the foot of the ramp.

She can see about a dozen people inside, men and women of all ages, ranging from gangly teenagers to wizened veterans. Each is carrying some sort of weapon, whether it be blaster, bomb, or dagger, and they’re all murmuring to each other, moving around, dressed in dark clothes, blending in with the interior of the shuttle.

“Whoa,” Bodhi breathes.

K-2SO, folded awkwardly in the space, spots them.

“I’m here because Cassian told me to be,” he says, as if there was any doubt.

But then he adds, most unexpectedly, “But also because Rogue One is here, and I was always the _first_ member of Rogue One.”

And this is true, too: K-2SO was, quite possibly, the first of them to truly rebel from what he was supposed to be.

The soldiers in the shuttle quiet down, gazes turning to Jyn and Bodhi, stopped on the tarmac.

Chirrut and Baze step forward, moving halfway down the ramp.

“Ready, little star?” Chirrut asks.

“What is this,” Jyn says, voice oddly croaky.

“Rogue One,” Baze says, gesturing. “Just, uh… With some new recruits.”

“I did say we were always interested in adding members,” Chirrut says, with a knowing wink to Bodhi, who grins.

“You did all this?” Jyn asks.

Baze’s mouth quirks, and he turns, nodding behind him.

From further back in the shuttle comes Cassian. He’s found his Corellian-cut jacket, the jacket he was wearing the first time she met him on Takodana, and while he still looks more or less as he had that day, his eyes have never been softer.

“They were never going to believe you,” he says.

“I know,” Jyn says, because of course she knew.

She’d still had to try, anyway.

She’s hopeful like that.

“But we know better,” Cassian says. “We believe you. And so do they.”

He gestures behind him, at the assembled team, the ten other soldiers. They are all people Jyn has met, people she’s eaten with, and laughed with, and played card games with. People she’s sparred with, and talked to, and listened to. People she likes, who she considers to be friends.

All here.

For her.

Because Cassian asked them to be.

She doesn’t know what to say.

No one’s ever had this kind of faith in her; including herself.

And now she has so many people with this kind of faith.

The soldiers look at her, ready and willing, volunteers for a most daring and unusual mission. Unsanctioned. Unapproved.

Rogue One, living up to its name.

Slowly, she nods.

The soldiers resume their preparations.

Cassian, Chirrut, and Baze walk down the ramp, to stand before her and Bodhi.

“You’re all… Okay with this?” she asks, because Rogue One has always been more of a democracy than anything else. Even with Cassian as their official leader; he’s always listened to their input, and used it to put together their mission plans.

“The Force is strong with us,” Chirrut replies, and she supposes this is just as good an affirmation as anything else.

“I would like to do everything I can to destroy the thing that killed Jedha,” Baze says, and Bodhi nods fervently in agreement.

Jyn looks at Cassian.

“I’m following you,” he says, as though this should be obvious, and for the first time, she begins to believe it might be. Obvious, and true.

She’s already decided to go to Scarif.

_“Do you never wish we could have more?”_

“You’re with me?” she checks, because this is all so new and foreign, his calm and stated devotion to her, and her goals, and her beliefs.

_“Because you asked me, recently, if I ever wanted anything more, and I realized that I did. And I thought… that maybe we could. Have more. Maybe we still have time.”_

Cassian smiles at her.

“All the way,” he confirms.

This is him choosing her, over what the Alliance wants him to do, wants him to be.

She has only ever wanted him to choose _her,_ when she asks him to.

And to choose her when she doesn’t explicitly ask him to.

Hesitantly, she reaches out, and takes his hand.

She isn’t sure that she’s forgiven him entirely; but she sees now how hard he’s trying, how he’s changing right in front of her eyes. How he’s teaching himself how to be _better;_ a better friend, a better husband, and a better man.

The kind of man she always knew he could be.

He might be late; but she thinks he isn’t _too_ late.

“May the Force be with us,” she says, and Rogue One grins at her.

 

* * *

 

Bodhi settles into the pilot’s seat.

At his side, K-2SO prepares for take-off, readying the shuttle for the long flight to Scarif. Jyn is crouched behind Bodhi’s seat, going over the blaster and dagger Baze had given her, checking to make sure everything is in order, that she doesn’t need anything else.

“Oh,” K-2SO says, suddenly, and Jyn and Bodhi look up. “I almost forgot.”

K-2SO turns to the crate next to him, a crate Bodhi sees is filled with clothes; lighter jackets and spare gloves for any of the assembled volunteers who might need them. But what K-2SO retrieves from the crate is not a pair of gloves, nor a jacket: it’s a gray scarf.

Bodhi vaguely remembers seeing Jyn wearing it on Jedha.

K-2SO holds the scarf out to Jyn, who looks at it with the kind of expression that is both heartbroken and joyful.

“You brought it back,” she murmurs.

“I retrieved it from the U-wing, yes,” K-2SO confirms, and Bodhi also vaguely remembers K-2SO doing this, when they gathered what they could from the crashed U-wing on Eadu. “I wasn’t sure, but I… I suppose I _hoped_ you might, one day, want to wear it again.”

Bodhi doesn’t know the significance of the gray scarf, and K-2SO gathers as much from his confused expression.

“Cassian gave this scarf to Jyn,” K-2SO explains. “As a wedding present.”

“We didn’t really have anything to give each other,” Jyn murmurs, staring at the gray scarf. “But he saw this, a few weeks later, in some shop on… Kriff, I don’t even remember which system. But he saw it, and he thought… He thought I would like it. And he was right, of course.”

She takes the scarf from K-2SO.

After a moment, she wraps the scarf around her head, rubbing her fingers over its slightly frayed gray edge.

K-2SO nods, gratified.

A crackle comes over the communicator, an air traffic controller insisting the Imperial shuttle has no clearance to take off, despite the shuttle completing every step prior to a take-off.

“What’s your callsign?” the controller demands.

And Bodhi, who had uttered it with anxiety in front of a stormtrooper on Eadu, says it with delighted confidence now.

“Rogue,” he says. “Rogue One.”

“Rogue One?” the controller splutters. “But you’re not--”

“We are,” K-2SO interjects.

“Pulling away,” Bodhi orders.

K-2SO nods.

“Rogue One,” he confirms. “Pulling away.”

 

* * *

 

There really isn’t any space for privacy on an Imperial shuttle over-crowded with fifteen soldiers and a KX-series Imperial droid, and Cassian deeply regrets this fact when he climbs up the ladder to the upper deck and sees Jyn wearing the gray scarf.

His heart does a funny little stutter at the sight, like it did the first time he saw Jyn in the street on Takodana.

He pauses, right there, just next to the ladder.

Jyn looks up from where she’s sitting against the wall of the shuttle, and gives him a soft smile.

Bodhi catches this, and makes a show of meaningfully pulling on his headphones.

K-2SO seems to war with himself for a moment before following suit, awkwardly wedging the co-pilot’s headphones over his head.

Cassian sits next to Jyn on the floor.

She looks at him, eyes darting over his face, and he looks back at her. He stills when her hand reaches up, brushing over the bruise blossoming on his cheek.

“Sorry,” she murmurs.

“The slaps hurt more,” he admits, and she flushes, so he adds, “I deserved them.”

Jyn shrugs. “You didn’t kill him.”

“The fact that you knew I might means I deserved them.”

She doesn’t disagree with this.

Instead, she turns the edge of the gray scarf over in her hands.

“You’re wearing the scarf,” Cassian says, as if this isn’t very obvious.

Still, Jyn humors him: “I’m wearing the scarf.”

And then, without making him ask, she pulls her marriage pendant out from under the scarf.

He swallows, hard; he hadn’t been sure she’d still had it.

“Thank you,” he manages.

She nods.

“We’re probably going to die on Scarif,” Jyn says.

Scarif is approximately six hours away; so this really means they are probably going to die _today._

“Yes,” Cassian agrees. “We probably will.”

“I don’t… I don’t want to die while I’m mad at you.” She pauses, and adds, “And I don’t want you to die while I’m mad at you, either.”

“Don’t want to let me off the hook?”

“Absolutely not.”

He laughs, and Jyn laughs with him.

Hesitantly, he reaches out, and takes her hand. She holds his tightly.

“Regrets?” he wonders.

She looks up at him, green eyes watery and bright.

“I wish we could have had more,” she says.

A home. A life without killing. A space to forgive. A place to build a family.

Above all: to know each other, in a time of peace.

This little moment, this moment of understanding one another, this smidge of existence where Cassian tries to be the best husband he can be, where Jyn finally feels like he will choose her; this is it. This is the _more_ . This might very well be all the _more_ they get to have.

“What about you?” Jyn asks.

He lifts her hand, and presses a kiss to the back of it.

“More time,” he says, because he thinks this sums it all up.

Jyn nods in agreement, eyes closing for a moment.

Cassian looks at her, wondering how much time is left exactly, if the time he has left to simply _look_ at her, to _see_ her, might be narrowed down to a handful of hours.

It isn’t nearly enough.

“I love you,” he says, because he thinks he has never told Jyn this sentiment enough. He should have told her everyday, a thousand times; he should have told it to her in every conversation lull, between every debrief and regrouping, amidst silence and amongst chaos. He should have told her, always.

Under his hand, the gray scarf is soft, and Jyn is trembling with grief.

Grief of all that has happened, and all that might await them on Scarif.

“I love you,” she whispers, but the words sound like they are coming to her almost easily, and not forced or stuttered like they’ve been in the past. She sounds certain, and resolute, and he understands: she still loves him, now, and here. Right before the probable end; the literal end of them.

This, he thinks, is all he’s ever wanted from her.

For her to be there, with him, at the end.

“All the way,” he reminds her.

She nods, determined, and trusting. “All the way.”

 

* * *

 

She was seventeen the first time she kissed him, abruptly stopping him in the middle of a marketplace on Corellia, and pulling him down to her, and he was so surprised by it that he ended up avoiding her for a week.

Their friendship very nearly died that week, not to mention any potential _more_ they could have.

When Jyn confronted him (because of course she did, of course she had spent that week of awkward silence quietly fuming at his nonsense) she reminded him that he didn’t owe her anything, that they could absolutely only be friends, allies, actual partners in crime.

“If you don’t want me, you don’t want me, and that’s fine,” she said to him, almost yelled it, cheeks red, eyes bright.

She was just so _bright._

Part of him thought she’d actually burn him alive if he got closer to her.

And the problem, obviously, wasn’t that he _didn’t_ want her; because he definitely did. And he was conflicted over this, and guilty, because while seventeen was of age on Fest, he was twenty-one, and the person who’d brought her into the Rebellion, who was often her only constant source of support and kindness, and he worried he was taking advantage, worried she only wanted him because he was the first to find her, and want her, and try to _keep_ her.

(He looks back on this memory now, and wants to laugh at his idiocy, on how long he clung to this idea that it was Jyn who was not ready, when he had never once been ready for her, in no way, shape, or form.)

The problem was that he was terrified of losing her.

She was his friend, his best friend, his only real friend outside of K-2SO, the only person he felt he could admit his fears and mistakes to, the only person who listened to him and still wanted to know him. He was terrified that if they embarked on _this_ (whatever _this_ was, or could be) that somewhere down the line, she’d realize how broken he was, how dark, how cold and cruel, and she would walk away; she’d want more, more than him. She would leave, and take all her bright, warm light with her.

He was terrified of falling back into the dark.

Not after knowing how _light_ people could be.

Not after knowing how much he _loved_ the light.

They danced around their weird impasse for months, even after Jyn turned eighteen, even after he fell more and more in love with her, even after _K-2SO_ had started to notice there was a strained tension between them, even after Baze and Chirrut’s jokes and comments became less and less subtle. They didn’t talk about _it._

And then Cassian was shot on Mygeeto.

The blaster shot tore through his abdomen, snagging a couple major organs on its way, and he fell hard, and tasted blood in his mouth, and knew he was bleeding internally and knew he was probably going to die. And he saw Jyn’s white face, felt her drag him to a medical center (and how she did this, he never found out, because neither of them had been to Mygeeto before, and they didn’t know where anything was) and he saw how the doctors barred her from following him in, because as far as they were concerned, Jyn had no connection to him beyond _friend who’d been there when he’d been shot._

And Cassian thought this was unacceptable, and _wrong._ Of course she wasn’t just his friend.

She was who he wanted to be right with him, at the end of it all.

So when he woke up a couple days later, in critical condition but able to have visitors, and saw Jyn’s trembling shoulders and wet eyes, he told her.

“I’m in love with you. Please don’t go.”

And Jyn stared at him.

“You’re a kriffing _moron,_ Andor.”

But she took his hand.

And she stayed.

 

* * *

 

Jyn and Chirrut pray as Bodhi speaks to the control tower guarding Scarif from outside traveler.

Chirrut grips her shoulder, his other hand wrapped around Jyn’s, which clings to her kyber crystal. K-2SO sits perfectly still, with Cassian standing behind him, more or less holding his breath. Baze is there as well, eyes closed, shockingly calm.

If this doesn’t work; they’ll get blown out of the sky, and they will have a record for shortest mission ever attempted.

But they get in.

They wait until Bodhi has turned the communicator off, and then Jyn and Chirrut laugh out of sheer relief, and Cassian grins, and K-2SO relaxes, and Baze gives a deep sigh. Bodhi looks a little stunned, his calm composure flickering away, showing the young man underneath.

“That’s the citadel tower,” he points out, flying to the landing pad they’ve been instructed to land on. “I don’t know much about Imperial bases like this, but that giant dish on the top guarantees they have data in the tower they send out around the galaxy. The plans must be in there.”

“Sounds right,” Jyn agrees, eyes locked on the tower.

Cassian, at her side, is studying the ground.

Scarif is beautiful, and Jyn hates it. The water is a brilliant, serene blue, and the sand looks soft and warm. Palm trees litter the landing pads and platforms, swaying in a cool breeze, the white sun overhead dominating the scene.

“I want to go on a vacation here,” Bodhi breathes, eyes wide.

“No, thank you,” K-2SO says. “The sand would impede my gears.”

“You say that like it’s a bad thing,” Jyn says, automatically.

She regrets her flippant comment as soon as she says it, because K-2SO is _here,_ and while he’d said Cassian had told him to be, he’d also said he was here for Rogue One. Their team.

“I’ll help you clean them out,” she adds, hoping to lessen her harshness.

K-2SO looks at her.

“That would be agreeable,” he says.

Cassian glances between them, clearly startled by the civility of this exchange.

Chirrut smiles.

“So, uh…” Bodhi frowns, carefully navigating them through the sky, the beaches of Scarif below.

“What’s the plan?”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ending the chapter here gives me time to figure out the answer to Bodhi's question. oops.
> 
> But we ARE at Scarif, so!!! Getting there.
> 
> The gray scarf backstory is similar to its backstory in the Nonsense, where it was a gift Cassian gave to someone, but the recipient is changed here. "All the way" also makes a similar appearance.
> 
> Cassian's near death experience is mentioned in BLOOD BROTHERS.
> 
> I'm also pretty sympathetic towards Draven, which I know isn't the most Popular Opinion. But I understand him; he is exactly who Cassian would have become if Rogue One had not intervened/if Cassian had not decided to change. So I get it. That scene between them is not to say Draven is giving Cassian permission; more like Draven realizing he cannot control Cassian anymore; Cassian has basically outgrown him. ("We are what they grow beyond.") Cassian already made his choice.
> 
> Bodhi thinking "This can begin to make things right" is a shoutout to that opening line in TFA.
> 
> \---
> 
> I will finish this story but because I'm Ridiculous, I've started a new one; a long-ish exploration on the relationship between Leia and Ben/Kylo. Back in the day, during the writing of the Nonsense (maybe SAIL TO THE MOON?) someone said they were interested in seeing my take on that relationship, since I wrote so much about a couple other mother/son relationships in the Nonsense. (Namely Serafima and Cassian, Jyn and Fima). At the time I kind of LOL'd because I didn't understand Ben/Kylo Ren at ALL. Seemed like Generic Bad Guy, not much there. Also I never believed Leia in TFA when she said he still had good in him. 
> 
> **TLJ SPOILERS TO FOLLOW**
> 
> But then I saw TLJ, which gave a lot of info on what happened with Ben/Kylo, and had that GREAT scene where Kylo and Leia, like, Force-connected and he didn't fire on her cruiser. Both Carrie Fisher and Adam Driver were SO EMOTIVE in that moment, and it really struck me, and I wanted to know what Leia and Kylo were thinking, and now I'm 6700 words into a Something, trying to puzzle it all out. I'm still not, like, Sympathetic to Kylo (dude makes the wrong choice EVERY TIME, even while knowing of good!) but I understand his motivations better. Does that make sense? Still not Pro-Kylo; but always Pro-Leia.
> 
> I WILL finish this story, though!!!
> 
> But if I don't update before: Happy New Year.


	9. Seizing The Sword

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> She chokes up then, looking at them all, suddenly aware that this may very well be the last time she sees them: alive, and together. Rogue One.

Initially, it all goes smoothly.

They land on their assigned platform without any trouble. Bodhi tells them that an Imperial officer and a security guard will be coming aboard to meet with him, and so they all hide, and Jyn ends up wedged between Cassian’s back and the wall of the shuttle, and she grips his shirt in her hand, and feels his heartbeat thudding against her knuckles.

In her other hand, she holds her kyber crystal, and prays.

Chirrut, huddled next to her, suddenly smiles, and she knows Bodhi has succeeded.

The twin blasts from Baze’s easily-identifiable cannon confirm this feeling.

 

* * *

 

The mission is, technically, very much _Jyn’s_ mission, but she still turns to Cassian for advice and input.

He’s been planning and executing missions for longer than she has, has a decade of experience as a leader, and Jyn trusts him like she trusts very few others. Even those times where she’s disagreed with him, she’s always been able to see his perspective, and she’s always listened to his direction; and he’s usually right.

Their plan is this:

-Jyn, Cassian, and K-2SO will head into the citadel, and make their way to the data tower, and locate and steal the Death Star plans.

-Rogue One, led by Chirrut and Baze, will orchestrate a distraction.

-Bodhi, with a couple soldiers, will plan and advise them on their escape.

It isn’t a foolproof plan; not by any stretch of the imagination. But it’s more or less as wild a plan as Rogue One usually runs, and the soldiers Cassian has assembled have decided to trust them, and this will have to be enough.

“May the Force be with us,” Jyn says, and they smile at her, smiling through their fear.

She and Cassian change into uniforms stolen from the Imperials who’d been shot by Baze. The officer’s uniform fits Cassian almost alarmingly well, and he stands there, adjusting the cuffs, and looking at himself in a mirror.

“I look like my brother,” he murmurs.

She can kind of see it; his hair is too long and messy to be Imperial-regulation, his face not clean-shaven like it should be, but he stands straight-backed, and tall, and if she blinks, she can see Zeferino.

But she blinks again, and she just sees a very brave, and good, man.

“You’re not him,” she reminds him. “You’re here to do something good.”

He meets her eyes in the mirror, and nods.

He laughs a little at her as she changes into the black security uniform, which is a bit too big for her, but she makes do, trying to smooth the edges and the buttons as neatly as possible.

They head out to the front of the shuttle.

The rest of Rogue One is doing last-minute preparations, passing out bombs and dynamite, offering instruction on meet-up points and the best places to stick a bomb. Each soldier nods at Jyn as she passes, a couple clapping her on the shoulder.

Waiting at the mouth of the shuttle are Chirrut, Baze, Bodhi, and K-2SO.

Bodhi offers her a nervous smile.

“This is it,” he breathes.

She nods, and then she throws her arms around him. Bodhi hesitates, and then hugs her back.

“Thank you,” she whispers. “My father would be proud of you.”

“You too, Jyn,” he murmurs.

Baze tries and fails to look gruffly at her, and fails even more by swallowing her up in a tight embrace.

“Good luck,” he rumbles. “Little sister.”

Chirrut reaches out, and touches her kyber crystal.

“The strongest stars have hearts of kyber,” he says.

_“Jyn. My stardust.”_

“I know,” Jyn replies.

She chokes up then, looking at them all, suddenly aware that this may very well be the last time she sees them: alive, and together. Rogue One.

“Thank you,” she manages. “Thank you for everything.”

“We will see you on the other side,” Chirrut says, and squeezes her hand.

“I love all of you,” Jyn whispers, and the men smile, and nod warmly at her.

Baze grips Cassian’s shoulder, and Chirrut holds Baze’s hand. Chirrut’s other hand is wrapped around Jyn’s, who reaches out, and snags K-2SO’s elbow, while Cassian reaches out, and grips the droid’s other arm.

“Okay,” Jyn says.

They separate.

 

* * *

 

While Jyn speaks to Melshi, Cassian turns to K-2SO.

“You have to promise me something,” Cassian says.

K-2SO stares down at him, like he already knows he isn’t going to like what he’ll hear next. “What?”

“I told you to be here for Jyn, right?”

“And I said I would be here for _Rogue One,”_ K-2SO replies, pointedly.

“I know,” Cassian says, not bothering to hide his smile. “And I was very glad to hear that. But, now, I need you to be here for _Jyn,_ okay? Not Rogue One. And not me.”

“What do you mean?”

Cassian sighs.

“You might… There might come a time, out _there,”_ he says, waving a hand to mean Scarif, generally. “Where you have to choose. And Jyn is the one who is going to get the plans. This is her mission, her father’s mission, and the plans are hers to steal. I’m going with her, to help her, and protect her. So if you have to choose between her, and me; you choose her.”

“Cassian--”

“Kay,” Cassian says, sharply. “Please.”

For a moment, he thinks K-2SO is going to refuse, is going to insist that he will not do this; that he won’t sacrifice Cassian for anyone else, including Jyn, and the greater good.

But when Cassian reprogrammed K-2SO, he programmed him to be good. To be better.

“Okay, Cassian,” K-2SO says.

“Good,” Cassian breathes. “I am… I’m proud of you, Kay. And I’m grateful to call you my friend.”

“I as well,” K-2SO replies. He pauses, and adds, “But I am not happy about this. And I strongly believe that if Jyn knew, she would--”

“Then let’s not tell her. Just you and me, okay?”

“Yes,” K-2SO says. “Just you and me.”

Once upon a time: they were all they had.

Now: they have a family.

 

* * *

 

It’s almost time.

Jyn controls her breathing.

Cassian stands next to her, as the others move back into the shuttle. He looks down at her, and smiles, and she wonders how she ever looked at him in that gray Imperial officer’s uniform and saw anyone except her husband.

“All the way,” he reminds her.

The first time she kissed him, when she was seventeen, she’d reached up and put her hand on the back of his neck, and pulled him down to her.

She does this again, now.

The first time, Cassian was so startled he froze, and stared at her in shock.

But now, he smiles into it, his hand wrapping through her hair.

They part, and he helps her tug the ridiculous black helmet on.

K-2SO exits the ship first.

Cassian reaches out, and grips her hand.

And then he lets go, and walks out into the sunlight.

 

* * *

 

Initially, everything goes well.

Cassian, Jyn, and K-2SO make their way through the citadel unbothered. K-2SO, remembering Bodhi’s order on Eadu, does not look at the other Imperial droids he passes. Jyn, luxuriating in her anger at all she sees in this place, keeps her gaze locked ahead, and her spine stiff. Cassian, thinking of his brother, walks with a sense of superiority, like he has a right to be here.

Outside, Chirrut, Baze, and the rest of Rogue One orchestrate anarchy. They plant bombs at key locations, and scatter dynamite in the sand. They find excellent look-out points, and communicate with the others through comlinks. Chirrut runs smoothly over the white sand, thinking of the rocky sand of Jedha. Baze gains satisfaction and retribution with each stormtrooper he knocks out.

In the shuttle, Bodhi speaks with another soldier who’d been assigned to stay with him, going over possible escape routes, using their combined knowledges to parse out the optimal ones. Bodhi is still dressed in his Imperial jumpsuit, just in case he needs to look like an Imperial, but Jyn had ripped a Rebel Alliance patch off a jacket on Yavin 4, and he has the patch in his pocket, over his heart, where it always should have been.

The bombs go off, and Scarif falls into chaos.

They reach the citadel tower, and K-2SO stands guard outside, while Jyn and Cassian rush in.

 

* * *

 

“Stardust,” Jyn breathes.

“Stardust,” Cassian repeats, and blinks, and recalls six years of conversations with Jyn, whispers passed over bedsheets in the dead of night, sad eyes and clenched fists, and remembers. “That’s what your father--”

“Yes,” Jyn confirms, and her eyes are shining.

_“Stardust,” he whispers. “You must remember that. Stardust.”_

_“I do,” Jyn says, confused now._

_“Named for you,” Galen grunts. “Stardust. My Stardust.”_

She understands why he had insisted on reminding her of the nickname before he died.

“Those are the Death Star plans,” Jyn says, and she has never been so certain, and never been so heartbroken.

 

* * *

 

And then;

It falls apart.

 

* * *

 

Cassian has to listen to K-2SO die.

He never imagined having to listen to K-2SO die.

K-2SO was always meant to _outlive_ him.

He presses his hands to the cold metal door protecting the inner chamber from the outer chamber, and he closes his eyes, and he commits this moment to memory, determined to never forget what K-2SO sounded like when he died.

When he sacrificed _himself_ for Cassian.

Cassian reprogrammed K-2SO with the intent to make the droid more human.

Somehow, he managed to forget how being human includes the knowledge of self-sacrifice.

 

* * *

 

K-2SO left Cassian and Jyn with one final direction.

_Climb._

Jyn shoots out the window protecting the tower, and the two of them stand there, and look at the data tower itself, all its dark cartridges, all its cool grayness.

Together, they look up, at the flickering light indicating Stardust; indicating the Death Star plans.

Jyn turns to Cassian.

“Can we do this?”

He nods; it isn’t like they really have another choice.

“I’ll follow you,” he says, because this is a very dangerous climb, and if Jyn falls, he can try to catch her.

And it’s meaningful that Cassian climb after Jyn, and Stardust.

Cassian has spent his whole life trying to reach the stars.

Trying to follow the light.

 

* * *

 

Bodhi’s feelings towards the Alliance are mixed.

On the one hand; they’re obviously a group of _good_ people, as they’re trying to fight and ultimately dismantle the Empire, and this is very much a cause Bodhi can get behind, and is eager to support. But on the other hand; the Alliance killed Galen Erso before he could redeem himself, and refused to listen to Bodhi (and Jyn!), who only wanted them to know information that could save the galaxy.

But Bodhi Rook is also someone who has a lot of faith.

He grew up on Jedha, in the Holy City, a place so sacred and ancient that spirituality practically seeps through its walls, latching on to everything it reaches; and that includes children.

When Bodhi went to work in the Empire, he did so with the faith that evil is never allowed to flourish, never destined to be so powerful, especially not on a galactic level; so, therefore, the Empire could not truly be evil.

But then he learned more about the Empire’s true work, and realized this belief to be naive, and false.

He searched for somewhere else to put his faith.

He found it in Galen, a man the galaxy would gleefully label as terrible, but who was trying to atone anyway.

And he found it in Jyn, a woman trying to bridge the gap, trying to give a legacy to those who most others had deemed unworthy of such a thing.

But the Alliance; Bodhi isn’t so sure about that.

Or, he isn’t, until the Alliance suddenly appears over the skies above Scarif, guns blazing, x-wings firing.

The Alliance comes through.

Bodhi’s faith is restored, and looking at it all, he finally understands.

It is not _things_ that deserve faith.

It’s people.

It’s the pilots in the x-wings, the soldiers on the ships, the leaders on the ground.

The men and women running around the beaches of Scarif, with determination, fear, and bravery in their hearts.

They’re all just doing what they can.

It is all anyone can ever do.

And Bodhi Rook; Bodhi is one of them.

He watches a handful of Alliance ships break through the barrier to skate across the blue skies of Scarif, and then he turns to Tonc, the soldier loitering in the shuttle with him.

“Let’s get in the air,” he says.

 

* * *

 

“He’s _what?”_

“He’s flying,” Chirrut says, smiling, face turned to the sky.

Baze follows his gaze, tracking the Imperial shuttle that is following a couple Blue Squadron x-wings; but rather than firing on them, it’s firing on TIE fighters and AT-AT Walkers on the ground. He imagines the bewilderment coming from Imperial air traffic controllers, imagines the yelling matches between supervisors and subordinates, the confusion over which shuttle, exactly, should be shot down.

And Baze grins.

 

* * *

 

They climb.

Jyn moves as quickly as she can, eyes locked on the data plans above her.

When she grabs them, she yells with delight, and she hears Cassian’s relieved laughter just below her.

But they have no time to celebrate; not now, at least.

They only have time to climb.

Not five minutes later are they interrupted by a door opening, revealing a couple stormtroopers, blasters aimed and firing.

Cassian yells at her to keep going, and she hears him return fire.

She shuffles along, getting to the other side of the data tower, and then she looks down. She can see Cassian, see him trying to stay out of the way, and her heart jumps in her throat, terrified she is about to watch him fall to his death, here and now, and she prays, _Please please please please._

He doesn’t fall.

He kills the stormtroopers.

They keep climbing.

(In another universe, the Man In White is there, and he sends Cassian falling.)

 

* * *

 

Via Bodhi, Baze and Chirrut know where some so-called “master switch” can be located.

In the air, the Alliance soldier flying with Bodhi has successfully gotten into an Alliance channel, where they’ve gotten in touch with one of the x-wings, who then got in touch with their squad leader, who then got in touch with one of the hovering Alliance cruisers, who then got in touch with the others, and passed on the message:

_The plans will be beamed up soon. Get in position. Prepare to receive._

But there still needs to be a “master switch” flipped, which would allow the data plans to be sent despite the shield covering Scarif.

And, naturally, the switch is on the ground, near the citadel.

Back the way they’ve come.

While Baze and Chirrut are still alive, the rest of Rogue One has taken heavy losses. They’ve seen soldiers that flew with them from Yavin 4 die right before them, and even seen some additional ground soldiers (flown in by the Alliance) die as well. Though Baze has seen plenty of good men and women die before; it’s been a while. Because Rogue One, the squad he has spent the past few years working exclusively with, has never taken a casualty.

Well, they’ve taken injuries. But no deaths.

Until today.

Baze wonders if any original members of Rogue One will join these new soldiers.

The master switch is located in a bunker, and Baze, Chirrut, and the rest of their soldiers crouch next to the bunker, trying to shield themselves from the fire coming to them from stormtroopers, deathtroopers, and AT-AT Walkers.

It’s… A Lot.

“It’s out there,” Melshi pants, pointing. “The console. The master switch.”

Baze squints, and--Yes.

There is a literal switch, just visible through the passing smoke and blaster fire.

They’re _so close._

“We’re nearly to the dish,” Cassian says, over the comlink. “Are we ready?”

“The Alliance is,” Bodhi yells back, the sound of the shuttle he’s flying coming in through the connection.

“Baze?”

“Working on it,” Baze grunts.

He turns to Chirrut, crouched at his side, as always.

“What do we do?” he asks.

He expects a sarcastic comment.

He expects an eyeroll.

He expects… Something.

He does not expect Chirrut to smile, and close his eyes.

 

* * *

 

The soldier who is supposed to be Bodhi’s co-pilot, a man called Tonc, is gripping his seat, and watching the battle in the sky, the battle they’re currently deeply entrenched in, with wide eyes.

“You can really fly, man,” he breathes.

Bodhi laughs.

He belongs here, flying, high in the sky, looking at the ground below.

Shooting down TIE fighters.

That kind of thing.

Bodhi isn’t used to flying his Imperial cargo shuttle so violently, or quickly, but he relishes in it. He trained to be a pilot, dreamed of being a hero of a pilot, but was never given an opportunity.

Until now.

It’s an opportunity he has created for himself.

“What’s the status on the plans?” Bodhi yells to the comlink clenched in Tonc’s hand.

“Waiting for the master switch,” Cassian replies, and Bodhi thinks, wildly, that it sounds like he’s climbing.

 

* * *

 

Chirrut grips his lightbow.

He keeps his eyes closed.

And then he stands.

“I am one with the Force, and the Force is with me. I am one with the Force, and the Force is with me…”

He begins to walk.

Distantly, he can hear Baze yelling, but it’s coming from somewhere very far away; somewhere that is not this moment, not this chant, not this prayer. Chirrut can’t even really feel the sand under his boots, or the dirt on his chin, or the sun on his skin.

He is both here, and not here.

Over the din of the battle, he could swear he hears whispers.

But the Force, it turns out, is not quite a match to an imminent bomb.

The bomb lands just in front of him, and it sends him flying, falling hard on his back, and the world reorients itself. He gasps, more stunned at the movement than anything else, his eyes automatically opening.

_“Chirrut! No! Can you hear me?!”_

Baze’s cries, growing increasingly desperate.

Chirrut’s right leg has taken a nasty hit; he can feel blood seeping out, can feel the burn being sent from torn veins and nerves to his brain, where the pain will become paramount.

He has only moments.

He sits up.

_I am one with the Force._

_And the Force is with me._

_With_ **_me._ **

Without really thinking about it, he lifts his hand.

The master switch is still ten yards away.

“I am one with the Force,” Chirrut whispers. “And the Force… is with _me.”_

He curls his fingers.

And.

The master switch;

It _moves._

Chirrut doesn’t need sight to know this. He sees it, feels it, hears the _whispers_ say his name.

He closes his eyes.

The last thing he feels are Baze’s hands, wrapped around his shoulders, and dragging him away.

 

* * *

 

“We are… The master switch is… flipped,” Baze says, voice oddly patchy, almost shocked.

Cassian doesn’t have time to ask questions.

He climbs through the vent, scrambling to his feet.

Scarif is displayed out around him; it’s a beautiful, warm, comforting paradise.

Except at the moment, where the planet has become a battlefield.

He forces himself to look away from the battles happening above and below.

He follows Jyn to a control panel.

“... Looks like a comm terminal, but there’s no…” She’s muttering to herself, hands moving over the various parts of the panel, fumbling it out. “No audio, no… Wait, here… But. Could it really be that easy?”

She loads the plans into a slot for a data cartridge, and the panel accepts them.

But of course it can’t be that easy.

_“Reset antenna alignment.”_

Cassian turns around, Jyn mirroring him.

Together, they look at another control unit, at the end of one hell of a cliff of a catwalk.

“If this is how the Empire designs _everything,_ then they really shouldn’t be surprised about the flaw in the Death Star,” Jyn mutters.

“Stay here,” Cassian says.

“Cass--”

He doesn’t wait for her argument, or her permission.

He sets out on the catwalk, walking quickly. He and Jyn shedded their Imperial uniforms before embarking on the climb (to free their movements, but also, Cassian thinks, to ensure that if they died, they’d die looking like themselves) and the wind is gusting up here. The strength of it reminds him of the storm winds on Fest, but the air is still warm, and so he isn’t cold, even with only his shirt, and no jacket.

His marriage pendant, around his neck, also feels warm.

He gets to the control unit, and looks it over, finding a promising-looking dial, and turning it.

_“Dish aligning.”_

Well, then.

The massive dish above begins to turn, gears grinding loudly.

Cassian begins to walk back to Jyn, when he hears a painfully familiar noise: an incoming TIE fighter.

_“Cass!”_

He’s already running.

The TIE fighter comes screaming in, and wastes no time in firing, tearing the catwalk up, sending the control unit plummeting to the ground, far below. Cassian avoids being shot, but the floor panel in front of him is hit, and breaks, and he falls. He only prevents himself from sliding fully off the catwalk by snagging a bit of broken wire.

He hangs there for a moment, the sand-covered beach below so very far away, and then he feels hands wrapping around his wrists.

He looks up, catching Jyn’s white face.

“I’ve got you,” she breathes.

Together, they manage to get him up, back on the dilapidated catwalk.

“I told you,” Jyn hisses, eyes wide and shimmering, “That you _can’t_ die while I’m mad at you.”

“You’re still mad at me?”

“If that’s what it takes to keep you alive, then I am _furious.”_

Cassian laughs, and they hurry back to the control panel under the dish.

He sees that Jyn had started sending the plans as soon as the dish had re-aligned, and as they stand there, they watch as bit by bit, the plans are transmitted.

_“Transmitting… Transmitting…”_

Cassian can’t help but look up, at the wartorn blue sky, at the darkness of space beyond it.

The control panel stops humming, a status bar indicating the plans have been transmitted.

“They've got them," Cassian breathes.

“Yes,” Jyn whispers, and he looks at her.

Her green eyes are huge, staring at the sky, the battles and explosions reflected in her eyes. She turns to him, and there is something small and vulnerable in her face.

“They've got them,” she says, firmly. "Someone's listening."

(Someone is always listening; someone is always there.)

Cassian nods, and then looks up, as the sound of an incoming TIE fighter suddenly starts up again.

“Jyn,” he gasps, and reaches for her arm.

She moves, instinctively, yanking the data cartridge containing the Death Star plans out of the control panel, ignoring the squawk the machine makes at this improper disengagement. Cassian grips her elbow, and they run, barely getting out of the way as the TIE fighter blows up the space they’d just been standing on.

With an ear-splitting _crack,_ the satellite dish tips, and falls.

Cassian and Jyn stand against the side of the tower, watching the progress of the satellite dish, as it spins, falling in a wave of fire and smoke, tumbling down, landing on the citadel below with an explosion, sending up another spiral of flame into the blue sky.

“Don’t think I’ve ever seen the Empire fire on itself like that,” Jyn notes.

“They’re desperate not to lose the plans,” Cassian says.

Jyn nods. “Kriff. I hope the Alliance got them.”

“Well, in case they didn’t…” Cassian looks at the data cartridge clutched in Jyn’s fist. “We’ve got a backup copy.”

Her grip tightens around the handle of the cartridge.

“We’ve got a problem,” comes Baze’s voice from the comlink.

“What is it?” Cassian asks, because he can think of _several_ problems.

“Chirrut has been hit,” Baze replies, and Cassian recognizes the thinly-veiled panic in his voice. “His leg; he can’t walk. He’s… He’s bleeding out. Losing consciousness.”

Jyn’s eyes are wide, and terrified.

Cassian looks at the ground below, but he has no hope of finding Chirrut and Baze, not from this great height, higher even than most of the flying ships…

“Bodhi,” he breathes.

“Cassian?” Bodhi replies, voice a little distant.

“Start looking for Chirrut and Baze,” Cassian says. “Baze, tell him any landmarks you can see, anything that will help him find you. When you do, Bodhi, pick them up; and then _go.”_

There’s a short pause.

_“What?!”_

“Captain, I--”

“The plans have been sent,” Cassian snaps. “There is no reason for us to stay here. And Chirrut has been injured, and he needs immediate medical attention, and trying to find Jyn and me will take up time he might not have. Bodhi will get you, and him, and whatever other survivors you can meet up with, and then you can all fly back to base.”

“What about you, Cassian?” Bodhi asks. “And Jyn?”

Cassian looks at her.

The fear has gone from her eyes; now, she looks only resolute.

On the mission on Naboo, with Orla Thano, K-2SO had noted that Cassian and Jyn spent almost a majority of their time in public arguing. They argue about mission plans, and ships to steal, and contacts to meet and make, and when to start a fight with combatants and when to surrender. Many rebels, if asked, would say they have something of a volatile relationship.

And that isn’t entirely incorrect.

But that doesn’t negate the fact they are still a solid partnership.

How, when the going gets tough, when things fall apart, when decisions must be made immediately; they always agree. One-hundred percent of the time.

(Save for, of course, on the matter of Galen Erso.)

Cassian is not surprised to see Jyn’s firm nod, agreeing with his plan, without him having to check with her.

“We’ll find our own ride,” he tells Bodhi.

It’s the kind of thing they’ve done once or twice before.

“But--”

“Bodhi,” Jyn says, firmly, stepping closer to Cassian, to make sure her voice is audible. _“Go._ We’ll be fine.”

There’s another pause.

“I’m not happy about this,” Bodhi says, and Jyn smiles, and Cassian almost laughs.

“Understood,” he replies, and adds, “Thank you, Bodhi. Get them home.”

“Cassian,” Baze starts, and Cassian thinks he can count on one hand the number of times Baze has called him by his first name, and not a resigned or loud _Captain._

“Baze,” Cassian says. “Make sure Chirrut gets the medical attention he needs. For all of us.”

The bombs and explosions ringing in the air around them seem to fade away.

“Yes, Captain,” Baze says.

“Good,” Cassian breathes.

Jyn grips his wrist, biting her lip.

“May the Force be with you,” Bodhi says, and she laughs.

“You as well, Bodhi,” Jyn says. “And you and Chirrut too, Baze.”

“Good luck, little star,” Baze replies, and Jyn swallows hard at the nickname originally gifted to her by Chirrut.

“Let’s go,” Cassian says, and doesn’t wait for confirmation.

He pockets the comlink, and turns to Jyn.

“That was the right thing to do,” she says.

The right thing; not the _correct_ thing.

Slowly, he’s understanding the difference.

The correct thing would have been to insist Bodhi find them as well, to get the Death Star plans back to base, just in case the Alliance either didn’t receive the transmission (an idea Jyn and Cassian do not believe for a second) or to give them a second copy, in case the plans are somehow lost. That would have been the correct thing.

But the right thing:

“I thought we should save all the family we could,” Cassian replies, the loss of K-2SO a very heavy thing indeed.

Jyn nods. “Yes.”

With the hand that is not holding the data cartridge, she reaches out, and takes Cassian’s.

“Ready to run?” she asks, and he grins.

“All the way.”

 

* * *

 

Between Tonc and Bodhi’s thorough searching, and Baze’s surprisingly detailed description of a particular cluster of palm trees, they manage to locate Baze, Chirrut, and a couple other soldiers.

Baze has already called ahead, and so these are the last rebel survivors of Scarif.

Tonc loads everyone in, and Bodhi doesn’t have time to go down and see how Chirrut is doing, or to converse with Baze on if they can really leave with Jyn and Cassian.

The TIE fighters are coming back around, and Bodhi has lives to save.

“Good luck,” Bodhi breathes, as he flies the shuttle into the atmosphere, and they lose contact with Jyn and Cassian on the planet below.

 

* * *

 

They don’t get in touch with anyone else.

Bodhi reports picking up Baze, Chirrut, Melshi, and Basteren, along with Tonc. He also gives a brief update on the AT-AT Walkers and TIE fighters he sees polluting the ground and sky, and notes that the Alliance is beginning to pull away.

This is as good a confirmation as any that the Alliance received the Death Star plans.

A couple Star Destroyers were brought down by the Alliance, and managed to destroy the shield covering Scarif, and Jyn finds comfort in knowing Bodhi and the others have a clear shot at escaping Scarif unscathed.

She doesn’t have time to search for their Imperial shuttle in the smoky sky.

She and Cassian are getting ready to run.

They get in an elevator that was miraculously left unscathed by the TIE fighter’s shot that destroyed the satellite dish, and Jyn guesses the button for the beach-level, and the doors close.

In the flickering light, she looks at Cassian.

There is ash in his hair, and a small tear in his left sleeve, and a long cut running the length of his right cheek. His shirt is a little gray with the smoke, and from whatever grime might have been on the catwalk he nearly slid off of, but under the collar, she can see his marriage pendant.

Unconsciously, she fumbles for her matching one.

The movement catches his attention, and he looks at her.

She looks back.

Without being prompted, without warning; they reach for the other, holding hands.

“We’ll make it,” Cassian whispers.

She nods, swallowing her terror, her dread. “Right.”

“Have a little faith, Jyn.”

She can’t help but laugh. “That’s rich, coming from you, of all people.”

“If there’s any time to be hopeful, and optimistic; it’s now, isn’t it?”

“Yeah,” she agrees.

“I’d do it all again,” Cassian says, suddenly. “Everything that led me here, to you; I’d do it all again. I don’t regret it.” He pauses, and adds, “But I would, I think… I wouldn’t even consider killing your father. That, I would change. And I’d put you first, before everything else. I mean, specifically, I--”

“I know,” Jyn interrupts.

She knows what he means.

He doesn’t regret this moment, being here on Scarif, even with the near-certainty of death waiting for them on the beach. He’s glad to be here, with her.

“I always wanted you with me, at the end,” he murmurs.

“Me, too,” Jyn admits.

“But it isn’t the end.”

“Right,” she says, managing another shaky laugh.

The elevator doors open, showing a beach littered with bodies, crashed ships, and debris. The sun is setting over Scarif, casting everything in hazy, warm light, and if it weren’t for the obvious destruction and death, Jyn would really consider lying down in the sand and taking a long nap.

Cassian squeezes her hand.

“Your father would be proud of you,” he whispers.

She nods, and looks at him.

“Your sister would be proud of you,” she returns, and his smile is small, but true.

The thing they do not tell each other, that is nonetheless true, is this:

_I am proud of us._

“Let’s go kill a few more Imps and make them a little bit more proud,” Cassian says.

“Damn straight,” Jyn replies, and he laughs, and they drop hands, and begin to run.

 

* * *

 

“This is Rogue One, seeking a medical frigate, is anyone out there?”

Tonc’s voice is only slightly hysterical, and Bodhi can’t help but be a little impressed, which is an impressive thing in of itself, as it’s taking all of his piloting skills to get them through the chaos and devastation that is space above Scarif.

Ships are broken on all sides, detritus scattered among the stars, so thick and full it’s almost hard to see through it all.

A lost part of what Bodhi would guess was a cruiser bumps up against the bottom of the shuttle, causing a chorus of cautious yells from below.

“Sorry, sorry,” Bodhi mutters, but he’s a _little busy right now,_ and there’s only so much he can be expected to do.

He knows that if they survive this, if _he_ survives this, then he’s got the position as the pilot of Rogue One set for him, and that means he really needs to improve and hone his skills if he’s going to keep up with such a talented and brave group of people. Cassian Andor, a brilliant and fierce leader; Jyn Erso, a combatant in every sense of the word; Chirrut Imwe, a bit of an unknown, but a sage, and an asset; Baze Malbus, lethal but unexpectedly warm; K-2SO, stoic, and--

Bodhi’s thoughts come to a sudden halt, and he almost runs the shuttle straight into a stalled x-wing.

_K-2SO._

Neither Jyn nor Cassian had made any mention of the droid.

_Is he…_

Tonc slamming down the headphones interrupts Bodhi’s worry.

“The medical frigates have cleared out,” he grumbles. “Too valuable to linger. They’ve all headed back to Yavin 4.”

Bodhi had been hoping to be able to drop Chirrut off on a medical frigate, and then to go back to Scarif for Jyn and Cassian, but his hopes are dashed with this news.

He swallows.

_“Bodhi. Go. We’ll be fine.”_

“Okay then,” he says. “Let’s make the jump to lightspeed.”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know I kind of sped through this first Scarif part, but I only changed a few things from the film, I think. And I also already wrote K-2SO's death scene in GRAY AREAS, and didn't have anything to reconsider about it.
> 
> One of the complaints I saw about ROGUE ONE is that Bodhi, the self-proclaimed pilot, doesn't really get an opportunity to showcase his piloting abilities. So trying that out here. This cuts out his role in patching into the Alliance as he does in the film (and this omission probably means none of this could happen, but YOLO, this is a fan fic AU) but it gets him in the air, and I like it.
> 
> Chirrut moving the master switch via the Force was not my idea; I read it from Film Crit Hulk, though I'm sure others thought of it. it's a fun idea.
> 
> There should have been an officer with the stormtroopers firing on Jyn and Cassian on the tower, but I liked the imagery of the missing man; the Man in White.
> 
> There are two chapters left in this story. I was going to have Scarif be one long chapter, but I realized it would be TOO long (over 10,000 words) and so I'm breaking it up here. I think it works for the pacing, too. maybe. IDK. I am sorry for the delay, but very close to being done with the story!!


	10. Rapidly Falling Action

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> They fight in sync.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I added a couple scenes to the end of Ch. 9 about 10 minutes after posting it (but before an email notice about the new chapter got sent) so you might wanna double check and make sure you're totally caught up; the added scenes make a nicer split, I think.

They fight in sync.

It’s the kind of thing they’ve spent six years developing, and perfecting.

Cassian drops to the floor, and Jyn shoots the stormtrooper who’d been running at them. Jyn spins out of the way, and Cassian slams a broken pipe into the stomach of an Imperial officer. They aren’t trying to be quiet, or subtle; they’re only trying to run, and survive.

The data cartridge containing the Death Star plans hangs from Jyn’s belt.

They’ve inadvertently created something of a distraction; the Imperial ground forces on Scarif are unsure if the rebels had managed to transmit the plans successfully, and so the sight of two rebels fighting and killing their way across the beaches, a data cartridge with them, is very interesting. This makes Cassian and Jyn’s escape more difficult, but if it helps the Alliance flee with the plans; then it’s worth it.

“Up ahead,” Jyn gasps, and Cassian looks up.

A small shuttle depot is about fifty meters away.

He’s exhausted, body a little battered from falling so hard on the catwalk, pants below the knees soaked with the salt water of the sea, and he’s working mostly on adrenaline and a will to survive, and the sight of a depot containing ships is very welcome indeed.

They run through the water, slipping and sliding through the wet sand.

Cassian wonders if he’ll ever see a sea not stained with blood.

Naturally, this is when a fresh squad of deathtroopers appear, wasting no time in firing on Cassian and Jyn.

They barely reach the depot in time, diving in through an open doorway, skidding across the smooth black floor, hitting the back wall with very little grace. They scramble to their feet, running again. Cassian keeps Jyn ahead of him, following her, occasionally turning to fire back at the deathtroopers just behind them.

“Keep going, keep going,” he yells, reminding her that he’s there, that he’s right behind her.

Right up until he isn’t.

Jyn darts through a doorway, and Cassian doesn’t know if it was an intentional shot, or just a lucky one, but one of the deathtroopers’ shots slams into a control panel on the side of the doorway, causing the heavy gray doors to slam close. Cassian barely prevents himself from running smack into them, his hands landing hard on the metal, blaster falling to the floor.

For a moment, he’s only surprised.

Jyn; she was just there.

She’s on the other side, and though the metal is thick and heavy, he can hear her voice, can hear her yelling his name, her fists making small thudding noises on the other side of the doors.

He hears the deathtroopers reach him.

“Turn around,” one of them calls.

Cassian blinks.

 _So,_ he thinks. _This is it._

The end; without Jyn.

It’s probably for the best, he reasons.

He has a good guess as to what happens to him next.

He swallows, and turns. He’s painfully and obviously unarmed, dropped blaster lying pointlessly on the floor, some three feet away, and any move towards it would result in imminent execution.

He can only hope Jyn will come to her senses, will remember the Death Star plans hanging from her belt, and keep going.

 

* * *

 

_“Cassian!”_

Jyn knows it’s stupid, knows it’s dangerous, to be screaming like this in the middle of a hangar on an Imperial compound on an Imperial-controlled planet, but she’s desperate, and panicked.

Cassian is on the other side of the door, a door that is far too thick and strong to be taken down by a small DL-44 blaster.

She races to the control panel, slamming her hands on buttons, terror mounting as none of them make so much as a noise.

“No, no, no,” she gasps, making the word a mantra.

Not now.

Not after everything.

She can’t take another loss.

For a moment, she can only stand there, in shock and denial.

She can’t hear anything on the other side of the door.

He might already be dead.

She can’t breathe.

 _Think,_ Jyn admonishes herself. _Think. Make a plan._

Jyn closes her eyes, and grips her marriage pendant and kyber crystal.

When Cassian had thought she was dead, on an Imperial-controlled world, he’d done the unthinkable, and gone back for her body. He’d been determined not to leave her, refused to let her be left alone on a miserable planet.

She opens her eyes.

 _There’s_ an idea.

Her blaster cannot destroy this door.

But there are, undoubtedly, other weapons in this hangar that can. Ships, with cannons, for instance. Ships that can fly out of the hangar, and double back around, and search for people on the ground below from high in the air.

It’s far from a foolproof plan. It’s actually an extremely reckless plan, and a stupid one. Not the correct plan.

The correct plan would be to fly out the Death Star plans, the data cartridge at her hip, to pass them on to the Alliance above, to make sure they fall into the right hands.

But Jyn is so tired of failing to save people she loves.

Like Saw and Galen, just this week.

Cassian cannot join them.

She stares at the heavy metal doors for a moment.

And then she turns, and starts to run.

 

* * *

 

“What’s your name?”

The question comes from an Imperial officer, the head of this squad of deathtroopers, a white man whose face is covered in sweat, and whose breath is coming in harsh pants, and so this negates the intended ferocity of his question.

Cassian stares back.

Part of him wants to make a fast movement so they kill him automatically, and quickly; he’s sure they intend to either execute him in a very public and gruesome way, or to torture him for information on the Alliance. Neither of these options are optimal, and he’d prefer to die here, and now, rather than reach either of those situations.

But he also knows he needs to give Jyn time.

Time to get the Death Star plans away, that is.

Because he knows Jyn Erso, knows his wife, and he knows that while she will do what they came here to do--complete her father’s mission, save the lives of the galaxy--that she won’t leave him.

She has never wanted to leave him.

Even when she thought she would--when he was going to kill her father--she didn’t _want_ to.

He does hope she’ll make the wise, self-preserving decision, and fly the plans straight to Yavin 4.

But Jyn isn’t really that interested in self-preservation.

And she’s been known to make decisions that are in no way, shape, or form, _wise._

He can’t help but smile.

“What are you smiling at?” the officer snarls.

Cassian shrugs. “I’ve won. You’ve lost.”

“Doesn’t look that way to me,” the officer says.

“The Empire has a habit of not being able to look past its own nose.”

“Hey, see here--”

“Lieutenant Mazo.”

The man snaps to attention, and Cassian freezes.

He doesn’t really know why he’s surprised.

Of course Zeferino is here.

His brother comes sweeping up the corridor, dressed in dark gray robes, robes emblematic of a wealthy and respected Festian man. His eyes are hard, and cold, and locked on Lieutenant Mazo, only sparing Cassian the briefest of glances.

“What is this?” Zeferino asks.

“We’ve apprehended this rebel, sir,” Mazo says, pride making his mouth sharp. “He’s being… obstinate, but we will get him to, ah, open up.”

Torture it is, then.

Cassian looks at Zeferino.

His brother is looking back at him now, studying Cassian with a focus Cassian doesn’t know what to do with.

Perhaps he’s only trying to decide which method of torture will be best.

_“Be brave, Cassi.”_

Cassian raises his chin.

Zeferino speaks then, to Cassian directly.

“You said you found my education at the Imperial Military Academy to be lacking,” Zeferino says, and everyone, Cassian most of all, stares at him in bewilderment. “But I don’t know, Cassian; I am not the one standing here with a dozen blasters pointed at him.”

“That doesn’t mean I’ve given up,” Cassian snaps.

And Zeferino; he _smiles._

“It never has,” he agrees.

Before anyone can do anything, Zeferino lifts his blaster, and shoots the Lieutenant.

Chaos erupts.

Cassian dives, snatching up his fallen blaster, and starts shooting the deathtroopers around him, moving to the side, crouching behind a support beam. He can’t hear or see Zeferino in the calamity, and this is probably for the best; he needs time to process this moment.

He doesn’t get nearly enough time.

The deathtroopers retreat, and Cassian stands, staring as Zeferino shoots at them a few more times, failing to kill a couple.

“Ah,” he sighs, shaking his head. “That’s unfortunate.”

Zeferino turns around, and Cassian, automatically, raises his blaster, pointing it at his brother’s chest.

Zeferino rolls his eyes.

“Really, Cassi?” he asks. “You’re still going to shoot me?”

“What the hell is happening? Why have you…”

A half-dozen deathtroopers lie dead around them.

It’s very quiet.

Cassian stares in shock at his brother, whose irritated expression fades, becoming sorrowful.

“I failed you, Cassi,” Zeferino murmurs.

“What?”

“I left you,” Zeferino says. “I left you. With the rebels. And Nerezza. And they ruined you. They turned you into… Into a spy, a killer, a bomber, a… soldier. A _soldier._ And I never wanted that for you. Not for my little brother. Not when he was so kind, and sad, and hopeful.”

Cassian feels very cold.

“What are you talking about?” he hisses.

“You were the best of us,” Zeferino says. “The best of our family. You don’t remember your childhood before Mama and Papa died, but you; you were so good.”

_“We remember our childhoods very differently,” Zeferino says._

_“Yes, I think we do,” Cassian says._

“And the Rebellion, and Nerezza; they stripped that all away from you,” Zeferino continues. “They _broke_ you; they turned you into someone you were not. Someone dark, and cold, and deadly. And I… I did not save you.”

_They would only meet occasionally for lunch, where Zeferino would ask Cassian how he was doing, and what he was up to. Cassian was a child, but aware enough of the war and politics to know he couldn’t divulge details of his work; so instead, he mostly talked about Nerezza. He talked about how she was teaching him so many things: how to survive, and fight, and steal, and pickpocket, and hide._

_He talked about how cold the Fest Rebellion base was, how he woke up to so much gray and frost, how he was learning to find satisfaction and warmth in that._

_Zeferino’s face would be hard as stone, and so Cassian learned to keep quiet about his life, and little by little, the brothers stopped speaking._

Cassian stills.

“It was my choice,” he whispers. “The Rebellion, the cause. _Nerezza._ I chose it. I chose all of it.”

Zeferino nods, expression heartbroken, and Cassian has no idea how to handle any of this.

“I think I realize that now,” Zeferino allows. “When I… When I killed Nerezza--” And here the air thickens, both men tensing at the reminder of the crux of their conflict “--I thought you… I thought you might leave the Rebellion. I thought you were young enough to not be so attached. I thought you would… I thought you would decide this war was not for you. That you could have so much more.”

_“This is not your war, Cassi.”_

“But I was wrong,” Zeferino continues. “I think that day was when the war actually _became_ your war. And when I saw you in that jail cell, years later, and I saw your rage, and your brutality; I believed you were lost. I thought, maybe, you died the same day Nerezza did.”

“I used to think so,” Cassian admits.

“But then,” Zeferino continues, “On Coruscant. I met your wife. This… This young, spirited girl. This _bright_ woman. You see it?”

“Of course.”

Cassian hadn’t known Zeferino saw the light, too; that Zeferino recognizes bright people, like Cassian does.

Zeferino smiles.

“And I thought, _Perhaps Cassian is not truly lost,”_ Zeferino says. “And I was right. Because I gave you time to do the good thing, to come back for her, and you _did._ You went back for her. When all rationality, all _hope,_ was lost; you still tried to save her. You refused to leave her. And I looked at you, and I thought… You were still there. You were still my brother. I told you, Cassi. You are not Nerezza. And you are not me. You are _better_ than us. You’re _good.”_

 _“You are not Ezza, Cassi. And you are not me. You’re better. You’re_ good. _Remember that.”_

At long last: Zeferino is explaining himself.

Why he has tried to save Cassian. Why he has let him go, so many times.

“But you tried to kill me,” Cassian whispers. “On Eadu.”

Zeferino laughs.

“Think, Cassi,” he implores. “I did not try to _kill_ you.”

Cassian blinks.

Every hit or punch Zeferino landed hurt, but were not lethal. Even now: the only obvious bruise Cassian has from that day came from Jyn, punching him on the face.

Jyn, who Cassian fought while actively trying not to hurt her.

He realizes it was how Zeferino fought with _him;_ someone single-mindedly furious, someone trying to defend their family, someone who thought they had nothing left to lose. It was the same.

And all of Zeferino’s blaster shots; they weren’t deadly. They would have gotten him in the knee, or the shoulder. Ultimately, they were survivable.

Now, on Scarif, destruction and death around them, Cassian looks at his brother.

 _Really_ looks at him.

When he saw Zeferino on Coruscant, he got a glimpse of their father, of a man who loved his family, and fought to defend it.

He looks at Zeferino now, and gets a glimpse of something new, too.

His brother.

“I never wanted to hurt you,” Zeferino breathes. “But I am starting to believe that _hurt_ is the only thing you and I give to each other.”

“Why did you do it?” Cassian whispers. “This…”

He waves his hand, indicating Scarif, the Empire, the Death Star.

Zeferino’s face is devastated.

“I believed the Empire would create stability, and peace, following the chaos of the Clone Wars,” he says. “I thought… I thought I could help keep it in check. I went into politics hoping to have a bigger impact than I would as a Military officer, and when I heard about the Death Star, I… I thought I could stall it. Or ensure it was not what they wanted it to be. But I was wrong.” He looks at Cassian, and there are tears in his dark eyes. “I was wrong, Cassi. I’m so sorry. I have only ever wanted to save _you,_ and I think… I worry I doomed you, instead.”

“Ezza…”

“Nerezza was ruthless, and cold,” Zeferino says. “Much like myself. But not you. And then, somehow, along the way… On Eadu, you said you thought you were more like _me,_ and you meant that because of the viciousness you employed to try and kill me. And maybe you were right. But that was also Nerezza, too. And you always deserved more. And I… Over the years, I have slowly come to believe Nerezza deserved more, too. She was just a child, swept up in the war.”

“You were, too,” Cassian breathes, without really thinking about it.

But he means it.

Nerezza, Zeferino, and Cassian Andor. Three children, who lost their families, their homes, and themselves; all to the war.

Who all repeatedly sacrificed their siblings for it.

Nerezza: glad to see her Imperial-sympathizing younger brother die, determined to teach her Rebellion-supporting younger brother how to become someone like her, someone just as single-mindedly loyal to the cause, above all else.

Zeferino: willing to kill his Rebellion-loving older sister, sad to see his Rebellion-worshipping younger brother go down her same path.

Cassian: would die to keep the memory of his Rebellion-dedicated older sister alive, to the point of becoming her exactly, while desperate to murder the Imperial-worshipping older brother who killed her.

“Maybe,” Zeferino says. “But you are the only who has tried so hard to be good, to do good work, and the right thing, despite what the war has asked of you. To _love,_ because you wanted to love. Because you still could. Nerezza and I; the war stripped that of us both. We each knew it, saw ourselves reflected in the other. It only increased our brutality, and our hatred of the other. But you, Cassi… You _love._ Fearlessly. And that is so rare, and so _good.”_

“I’m not, though,” Cassian says, because he isn’t good; he nearly killed Jyn’s father just recently, not to mention all the murders, assassinations, bombings, spying, robberies, _crimes,_ he committed in Draven’s unit, for so many years.

He might be trying to be better now, but there is so much to atone for.

But Zeferino frowns at him, confused.

“Do you not see it, Cassi?” he asks.

“See what?”

“Yourself.” And Zeferino grins. “You _glow,_ Cassian.”

Cassian stares.

But before he can ask, the ground, the world, the entire planet, begins to shake.

It’s a feeling he’s experienced only once before. And quite recently.

“The Death Star,” he breathes, looking at the ceiling.

Zeferino’s expression turns grim.

“You must run,” he says.

“Come with me,” Cassian insists, and he thinks of Jyn, on Jedha, imploring her old, beloved mentor to go with her.

Zeferino hesitates, and then nods.

“Okay, Cassi. Let’s go.”

Together, the brothers run.

 

* * *

 

Jyn is frustrated to realize the hangar is mostly empty.

She guesses she shouldn’t really be surprised; the battle over Scarif was vicious, and desperate. She watched the Empire fire on _itself,_ in a last ditch attempt to prevent the robbery of the Death Star plans. It makes sense that the Empire has employed every ship possible in this battle.

In fact, there’s only one ship left in the hangar.

It’s quite large, and unusually expensive, a sleek, silvery thing, with heavy cannons and a long ramp. It takes her longer to break into than she would have liked, but the ship was not configured by the Empire, but by a smaller company, one she isn’t familiar with. But she’s Jyn Erso, and so she still breaks in, running up the ramp inside.

It’ll be difficult to fly such a large, opulent ship on her own, without a co-pilot, but she’ll manage.

She only has time for passing glimpses into various rooms in the ship, taking in a kitchen, a couple well-furnished bedrooms, a small hatch of well-stocked escape pods, a room filled with repair droids, and an office space. She’s just walking past a wall lined with blasters when the ship shakes violently, throwing her to the floor.

The shaking doesn’t let up, and she knows what it is.

_No._

The Death Star.

She is hit, all at once, with the full weight of what this means.

Scarif is about to die.

And Cassian will die with it.

She thinks of how quickly Jedha went up in rock and annihilation, and she knows.

She won’t be able to find him in time.

She lies there on the floor, and closes her eyes.

_Forgive me._

At least he won’t _stay_ here; the Death Star will annihilate Scarif, like it did Jedha. She won’t be leaving a body behind. There will be nothing to bury.

Jyn knows this will have to be a comfort. It will have to be enough.

She picks herself up, tucking the remains of her broken heart behind her lungs as she does so.

There will be time to grieve, later.

She still has a mission to complete.

She still has lives she can save. Even if none of them is the life she was most desperate to save.

It is, she thinks, the only thing left she can do to ensure Cassian’s death means something to the galaxy.

She climbs up a ladder, emerging into the cockpit.

The space is square-shaped, and unsurprisingly large and grand, considering the size of the ship around it, with an odd open space behind the two piloting seats and two passenger seats. She pauses, looking down at the open space, but can’t find any explanation for it, and there really isn’t time to figure it out.

She throws herself into the pilot’s seat.

“Let’s see…”

And she stops.

The controls and ship computer are not in Basic, but another language.

One she recognizes.

One she’s spent the past six years learning, sporadically.

_Why the hell is a Festian-made ship on Scarif?_

The answer comes to her as quickly as the question did.

_Because the Festian senator overseeing the construction of the Death Star is here._

“Kriff,” Jyn mutters, but sends a quick prayer of thanks up to Cassian, wherever he is, for taking the time to teach her some Festian words and phrases; just enough that she knows which button is which, what each question is asking, and how to respond to the ship computer.

She also allows herself to feel some satisfaction at the idea that Zeferino is about to die at the hands of the weapon he helped create.

The sound of the ramp of the ship opening behind her has her spinning in the pilot’s chair, getting up, blaster ready.

She can hear footsteps coming her way, and she lifts her blaster.

“Jyn?”

All the breath leaves her.

She knows that voice.

She _loves_ that voice.

It’s a voice she thought she would never hear again.

“Cassian?” she yells.

Climbing up the ladder to stand in front of her is the man himself.

She gasps, and before she can stop herself, she throws herself into his arms.

Cassian staggers a little at the force of her hug, but then finds his balance, and returns her embrace.

“Thank the Force,” Jyn whispers, clutching the back of his shirt in her hands, resting her chin on his shoulder.

“Um, sort of…”

Cassian sounds hesitant, and Jyn frowns, just in time to see the man who’s followed Cassian up the ladder.

The man who owns this ship.

The man whose death she had just reflected, with no trace amount of relish, on.

_Zeferino._

The Senator looks at her, and smiles. “Hello, sister.”

“What the _kriffing--”_

“It’s okay, Jyn,” Cassian says, quickly, stepping back from her to look at her fully. “He saved me.”

“He _what?”_

“Can we have this conversation later?” Zeferino asks, gently nudging Jyn aside so he can get to the pilot’s chair. “We have a planet killer to outrun.”

“Uh…”

Jyn stares as Cassian squeezes her arms, and then lets her go, to slide into the co-pilot’s chair next to Zeferino.

Next to the brother who he hates.

Next to the brother who he very recently _enthusiastically tried to kill._

“Jyn,” Cassian says, glancing back at her. “Sit down, please. And trust me.”

She can do that.

She sits in the chair behind Cassian, keeping her blaster close, eyes locked on Zeferino, as he moves through the pre-flight checklist.

From behind, the brothers look nearly identical.

“I haven’t seen this much Festian in a while,” Cassian comments.

“Are you rusty?”

“Of course not.”

Zeferino mutters something then, a phrase in Festian Jyn doesn’t understand, and Cassian _laughs._

_What the hell._

“Who taught you to fly?” Cassian asks.

“Papa, of course.”

“Was he good?”

Zeferino looks at Cassian then, and Jyn is stunned by the open sadness in the older man’s eyes.

“He was,” Zeferino murmurs.

She clears her throat.

“Are we--”

“Yes,” Zeferino says, voice firm, and they lift off.

Flying into direct, and violent, light.

Jyn can barely see Scarif, as everything is currently drowning in a brilliant white light, seemingly coming from the ocean. The light is functioning as a kind of cloud, almost, and moving rapidly towards them.

She supposes it makes sense.

Dying stars are blinding.

She can’t help but stare at the light, distantly aware of Zeferino and Cassian talking to each other, piloting together quite well, even though they had different piloting teachers. She assumes that must be some innate, sibling thing; but she never had any siblings, so she wouldn’t know for sure.

They break through the atmosphere, leaving the light behind, and then they see it.

Gray. Cold. Monolithic.

The size of a small moon.

“There it is,” Zeferino murmurs.

“Oh,” Jyn croaks.

_“Jyn. My Stardust.”_

_Papa, what have you done?_

Their quiet observation is interrupted by a warning beeping coming from the ship computer.

“Incoming TIE fighters,” Cassian says. “Why are they going after us? This isn’t an Alliance ship.”

Zeferino sighs.

“Because I failed to kill all the witnesses of my treason,” he says, and Jyn thinks, _Wait, what treason?_ but doesn’t interrupt. “I’m sure the deathtroopers informed their supervisors of what happened, that I saved the life of a rebel who might have successfully stolen the plans for our most dangerous weapon. I’m marked for death.”

“Right,” Cassian says, nodding. “So we make the jump to lightspeed as soon as possible.”

Zeferino smiles.

Jyn gives up trying to figure out what’s happened.

But while Zeferino was an officer in the Imperial Military, he was never a pilot, and he’s never flown a ship as large and ostentatious as this one. The senatorial ship was not designed with aggression in mind; it was designed for defense, designed to make sure its precious inhabitants survive.

And Zeferino has no experience dodging _TIE fighters._

He moves too slowly, and the ship takes a big hit, sending everything rattling.

“What was that?” Jyn demands, leaning over Cassian to survey the damage illustrated by the ship computer.

“Damage on the stern,” Cassian says, reading the Festian words in front of him. “Kriff. We might not be able to make the jump.”

“What do we do?” Jyn asks, anxiety rising.

Zeferino is staring down at the navigational system, eyes flickering at each approaching TIE fighter.

“We try it,” Cassian says, and moves the thruster.

And while the ship _does_ move more quickly, it doesn’t make the jump.

Jyn’s heart falls.

The TIE fighters are still chasing them.

“We’ll have to outrun them, or shoot them down,” Cassian says, voice firm.

Zeferino shakes his head. “Cassi--”

“You should know I’ve had a lot of practice shooting down TIE fighters, Zef.”

But Zeferino suddenly leans forward, peering out the window before them, and Jyn mirrors him, and Cassian, confused at their movements, follows their lead.

Ahead of them is a strangely thick cloud of what Jyn guesses to be cosmic dust.

And Zeferino grins.

“Perfect,” he says.

“What--”

Zeferino presses a button, and Jyn yelps as her chair suddenly tips back, and the ground disappears out from under her.

She falls, but only for eight feet or so, landing on her back. She sits up, and peers around, and realizes she’s in a small, clean room. A couple oxygen masks hang on one wall, along with a couple backpacks, a medical kit, and a radio. There are windows on either side of the room; one shows the cosmic dust cloud ahead, while the other shows the incoming TIE fighters.

She looks up, to Cassian staring down at her, bewildered.

“What is it?” he asks Zeferino.

“A private escape pod,” Zeferino replies, focusing on flying them closer to the cosmic dust cloud. “Designed to be a last-ditch escape for the senator on the ship. Made out of phrik, a metal native to Fest, one of the strongest and most impenetrable metals in the galaxy.”

“Fancy,” Jyn mutters, picking herself off the floor.

“Perfect,” Cassian amends, looking away from her, turning back to Zeferino. “Zef, this--”

He breaks off, as Zeferino suddenly leans forward, putting his hands on Cassian’s face, and pressing a kiss to his forehead.

Cassian stares, as Zeferino leans back, gripping his brother’s face in his hands.

“Remember, Cassi,” Zeferino murmurs. “You’re good. You glow.”

“Zeferino, what--”

Zeferino hisses a command in Festian, and Cassian’s chair tips back, and he falls, and Jyn only barely manages to get out of the way before he lands next to her in the escape pod. He sits up, staring up at Zeferino.

“Everything I did, I did to try and save you,” Zeferino calls. “I know you can’t forgive me for it. For Ezza, for working for the Empire, for… For so many things. And I won’t demand your forgiveness. My only wish is that, perhaps, one day; you will understand it. You’ll understand me.”

Cassian scrambles to his feet, his eyes wide, and terrified.

“Zeferino, no, don’t--”

“I love you, Cassi,” Zeferino says, and then his eyes turn to Jyn. “I’m sorry, Jyn. I understand… I understand Galen was your father, and I am sorry I could not save him. Perhaps saving Cassian will be atonement enough.”

“Course, Zeferino,” Jyn breathes, repeating the last words she said to Zeferino at their only other meeting.

“Zeferino!” Cassian calls, and he’s moving, hands reaching for the smooth wall of the escape pod, even as he, and Jyn, and Zeferino, know it’s hopeless. He can’t climb out.

“This is where my place in your story ends,” Zeferino says, and he’s smiling. “Goodbye, brother. And good luck. Until we meet again.”

“No!” Cassian yells, but it’s too late.

With one last, kind look, Zeferino hits another button, and the escape pod doors close, removing him from view.

A moment later, the escape pod is ejected.

Jyn falls again, and Cassian scrambles over to one of the windows.

They watch as the Festian ship speeds away, enticing the TIE fighters into following it, causing them to ignore the escape pod flying through space, away, towards the cosmic dust cloud. They watch as the Festian ship makes extravagant, unnecessary twists and moves, ensuring the TIE fighter pilots know there is someone flying it, enticing them to pass over the escape pod, and keep on the ship, firing on it.

Cassian’s eyes are wide.

They reflect the fire of the Festian ship exploding into pieces.

“Cass,” Jyn whispers.

His breathing is shaky, locked on the little bits of ship miles away from them.

All that is left of Zeferino Andor.

On the flight from Eadu, Jyn had looked at Cassian, and thought he looked older than she’d ever seen him.

She looks at him now, and thinks he looks younger than she’s ever seen him.

Like a child.

Watching his big brother die.

“Jyn,” he whispers, and looks at her.

They hit some of the rubble that makes up the cosmic dust cloud.

Ominous beeps and warning signals flash all around them, and they are thrown to the floor, as the escape pod shakes and trembles, the space outside turning gray and ashy, as more rocks and debris smash against the side of the pod.

“We have to buckle in,” Jyn yells.

They do just that, sitting on opposite sides of the pod.

Jyn grips the straps of her buckles in both hands, and stares at Cassian.

There are tears on his face, and his brown eyes are huge, and shocked, and afraid.

The escape pod rumbles around them.

They hit a heavier rock, slamming her against the wall, and she groans, blinking, and looks back at Cassian.

Whose head hangs limply, a startlingly large spot of blood on the wall behind him, blood dripping from the side of his head.

_“Cassian!”_

He doesn’t respond.

She bites her lip, tasting blood, as the shaking becomes more intense.

She lets go of one of her buckles, fumbling for the kyber crystal necklace around her neck, and she prays.

_Help us. Please. Anyone._

From outside the window, she thinks she sees the shape of a blue-green planet.

It’s quickly swallowed up by neon flames, the outside of the escape pod burning up.

She closes her eyes.

Time seems to slow and quicken all at once, and she prays.

She hears her mother’s voice, like she’s right next to her.

_“Trust the Force.”_

Jyn’s eyes snap open.

There’s a skidding noise, a loud crunch, a groan of metal, a bang, and everything goes dark.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I tried to hint, in this story and BLOOD BROTHERS, just exactly what it was about Cassian that Zeferino found to be unique, and worth saving. In BLOOD BROTHERS, he believes Cassian will choose to save Jyn, and Cassian does. and Cassian grows to believe it is the truest act of love he's ever done, and Jyn, at the time, wasn't even sure he'd go back for her. but Zeferino believed he would; because he always believed Cassian was, ultimately, good. The best of them.
> 
> [Some of the italicized flashbacks are from this story, and some are from BLOOD BROTHERS.]
> 
> and you can read Cassian's memories/flashbacks of Nerezza in this story, and pick up an undercurrent there. Nerezza WAS vicious, and ruthless; but Cassian loved her. he saw her lessons and help so positively, without really processing how they shaped him. she taught him to make the cause his family, and this was why he never put Jyn first.
> 
> [An Aside: in the Nonsense, Nerezza was aware of how she was shaping Cassian, and felt grief and guilt over it. Zeferino, when given the opportunity, never tried to KILL Cassian. [but he was also unashamedly pro-Empire, so. different.]]
> 
> Zeferino's insistence that Cassian glows, that Cassian is better than he sees himself: this is also Jyn's perspective. she always thought better of Cassian than he did himself.
> 
> the Jyn v. Cassian, and Cassian v. Zeferino fight scenes were scenes I Attempted to write to mirror a bit. if you read them again, with this new info in mind, you might see it. if not; my mistake!
> 
>  
> 
> The Afterword/Epilogue to go...
> 
> [and I'm tentatively confident to have it up on Sunday.]


	11. Denouement

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Do you never wish we could have more?”
> 
> This; this is the more.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this is the last chapter of this story, but it's also some 13,000 words long. I'd apologize for the length, but I'm not sorry.
> 
> CW: description of grievous bodily harm, unglamorous healing processes.

She assumes she died.

She cannot feel any part of her body. She isn’t even sure her eyes are open, the space she’s in is so dark. She almost feels like she’s floating, or hovering, like she’s totally adrift in this unknown, black space. The only thing she’s aware of is her own breathing, and an overwhelming feeling of loss.

_Cassian?_

Slowly, she becomes aware of a series of clicking noises.

Above her, a being forms.

It’s a skeleton with red eyes.

Her scream tells her that she can still hear.

 

* * *

 

Reality is told to her over the span of several days.

The being that was there when she awoke was not a skeleton, but a member of the Kobok species. Koboks are thin, sentient insectoids with red or white eyes. They are quite tall, with skeletal-looking bodies covered in skin that can be an off-white color, and the nurse who runs into the room upon hearing Jyn’s scream assures her that it is not uncommon to mistake a Kobok for a floating human skeleton, as impossible as that phenomenon is. Koboks, the nurse informs Jyn, are quite rare and unusual outside their homeworld, and so it isn’t surprising that Jyn has never seen one before.

One planet Koboks can be found on outside their homeworld is the one they are all currently on.

Roon.

This is also a thing Jyn is unfamiliar with, and the nurse assures her this is also to be expected.

Roon is largely uncharted. For a long time, it was entirely uncharted, cut off from the galaxy, due to the lethal ring of asteroids and space rock that surrounds it. They call this natural shield, which has the appearance of a cosmic dust cloud, the Cloak of the Sith, as it makes Roon nearly impenetrable.

But occasionally, things slip through it.

Things like a phrik-enforced escape pod.

Jyn doesn’t remember the crash, and the nurse is also largely unsurprised by this.

Roon rotates on its axis only once during its orbit around its sun, and this means one side of the planet is constantly bright while the other is constantly dark, and the escape pod had the luck of shooting across the sky of the dark side, a blur of a fiery ball that instantly caught the attention of everyone who saw it. Nothing comes to Roon by accident; they come through a handful of very specific, and very narrow routes, what with the Cloak of the Sith so difficult to navigate. The escape pod followed no such trajectories.

Roonians quickly converged on the crash site.

Initially, they thought the two people who had been inside the escape pod were dead.

(Jyn had assumed as much about herself.)

Jyn had been thrown from the escape pod, her mangled body lying some twenty yards away, in a deep mudfield.

“You’re very lucky there weren’t any Shamunaar hibernating in the field,” the nurse says, and Jyn has no idea what a _Shamunaar_ is, but decides it isn’t worth asking about.

It’s believed the thickness of the mud made for a softer landing than she would have had elsewhere, and so she suffered only a bruised spine, sprained wrist, and fractured pelvis. The doctor she first meets with uses this word, _only,_ because Jyn was found literally on fire.

The burns cover the majority of her torso, her chest, abdomen, and back, with sporadic patches on her arms and legs.

If her rescuers had been even three minutes later, she would have burned to death.

This is why Jyn couldn’t feel her body when she awoke.

This is why her body sent her into a coma that lasted two months.

She’s been in recovery that entire time, but the burns are still deep and thick, mangled, and a gruesome red. Roon, she learns, is an eclectic planet that believes in preserving antiquity, if antiquity still works well enough. The people prefer to use animals for farming labor over droids, and go fishing in actual wooden boats. This also means their medical tech is not as advanced as the vast majority of the galaxy, not even as advanced as most other Outer Rim systems’ tech.

On any other planet, Jyn would have had only a handful of thin burn scars for mementos.

But because she’s on Roon, her skin will forever be coarse and ugly.

She is more hurt by this than she had expected to be.

She’s never been vain, never had the luxury of dressing to amplify her looks, but there is something in the wretchedness of the scars that cover her body that makes her feel empty.

She can’t recognize herself.

The doctors sense her melancholy, and work to take her mind off it.

This is how she learns that the Death Star has been destroyed.

Roon might be isolated, but they can still reach the holonet, and they have enough merchants and smugglers who make pit stops on the planet that news travels surprisingly fast. The Roonians don’t know what it was, exactly; but they tell Jyn that Alderaan was annihilated only a few days after she crashed on Roon, and that the so-called “planet killer” that destroyed it was similarly blown up about a week or so later.

It’s believed to have been the Alliance, but no one is willing to say this aloud.

Jyn knows she should be comforted, and happy; the Alliance clearly received the transmission of the Death Star plans, which is a massive relief, because when Jyn had cautiously inquired about a data cartridge on the escape pod, the nurse had shaken her head, and said no one could find anything salvageable amidst the wreckage.

But she is struggling to deal with her new, very personal reality.

To deal with the fact that while her kyber crystal survived the crash and her burning, that while it was found still clenched in her burned fingers, her marriage pendant was basically incinerated.

Its twin was never located.

They think it was cut from its owner’s neck, or lost in the destruction he was found in.

 

* * *

 

Cassian was still inside the escape pod when they got to him. His legs were pinned under part of the heavy wall, and his doctor tells her they had to amputate both legs above the knee in an effort to pull him out of the pod before he could bleed out. A sharp edge of the escape pod also left a long, deep, and jagged cut, running from his left temple, across his face (mercifully avoiding his eyes), down the right side of his chin, and on to his chest and right arm, nearly severing it all off.

The irony of phrik, the metal Zeferino had said was native to Fest, almost killing Cassian does not escape Jyn.

But despite all this, he should be fine.

Should.

Because while it took Jyn two months to wake up, it only took Cassian three days.

But _wake up,_ as it turns out, is an inspecific term.

It does not describe how while Cassian’s eyes are open, and he’s breathing, and eating, that he has not spoken a single word. It does not describe how he was found with a dark bruise and dried blood on the back of his head, indicating he hit his head very hard at some point during the crash, and how the doctors found a brain bleed during a scan. It does not describe how empty Cassian’s eyes are, how his hands tremble violently, how he very rarely sleeps, seemingly preferring to lie in the dark and stare at nothing.

The doctors warn her that while it’s possible his muteness is selective, or borne from the trauma, it might also be due to some kind of brain damage he may have sustained during the crash.

They tell her he may forever be like this.

She demands to see him.

She can’t walk with her fractured pelvis, and so a nurse wheels her in a _wheelchair_ (not a repulsorchair, she can’t believe it) to the room down the hall of the medical facility, a room Cassian has refused to leave since he woke up in it.

She is too afraid to be hurt or irritated at him for not coming to see her, comatose as she was.

Cassian is sitting on his bed when she sees him. His back is to her, and he’s positioned to look out, at the dark, a big green field just outside.

The nurse, thankfully, leaves them alone.

Jyn carefully shuffles the wheelchair over, wincing at the stretching of the still-tender burns on her legs.

She stops herself at his side.

“Cassian.”

He doesn’t look at her.

The scar on his face is just as red and and rough as the burns on her torso, and she heaves herself onto the bed next to him with her good arm, smothering her groan as her pelvis protests the movement. She studies his profile, taking in the way the scar bisects his face in half diagonally, and notices that there are tears gathering in the stitches.

“Cassian,” she whispers.

Again, he doesn’t look at her.

She reaches out, and takes his hand.

She pointedly avoids brushing her fingers against what’s left of his legs.

Jyn has long thought of Cassian as a consummate survivor, like her. He’s someone who has lost his family, and his home. He’s committed terrible, soul-crushing acts, and kept going anyway. He’s refused to give up when all hope has seemingly been lost.

She doesn’t know what to make of this forlorn, and undeniably _broken,_ Cassian.

She wonders if his spirit was crushed with his body in the crash.

“Cassian,” she tries again.

 _Maybe we should have died,_ she thinks.

She imagines a future where this is all Cassian is, this shell of himself, and it is so lonely for both of them that she begins to sob.

_“Cassian.”_

She lifts her good arm, and gingerly holds his cheek in her hand, wary of the tears brushing up against her fingers, and the barely-healed scar. Carefully, she turns his face to look at her.

She remembers seeing him in the crashed U-wing on Eadu, and believing his eyes to be dead and cold as he spoke of killing her father.

She would rather see those eyes than the brown eyes she stares into now.

There is no hint of recognition, no sign of comprehension; he might as well be staring a wall.

No. Worse than that; he might as well be staring at _absolutely nothing._

But he’s looking at _her._

The doctors have assured her he isn’t blind, that he is clearly able to see around him, that his eyes react normally to light stimuli, but Jyn begins to doubt this assessment, because her _face_ should be stimuli enough.

 _“Please,”_ she croaks, her sobs making her voice shake. “Please.”

She presses her forehead to his.

“Come back to me,” she begs.

 

* * *

 

Here’s the thing about Cassian Andor.

It might take him days, or months, or even years. He might take meandering routes, or unnecessarily long or difficult paths, but the fact is, in every universe, in every life, in every scenario:

He always comes back to Jyn Erso.

 

* * *

 

_For a long time, Cassian dreams._

_He dreams he’s back on Fest, and it’s snowing. This is so normal, so commonplace on that planet, that he doesn’t register the scene as a dream, despite the fact he has not been on Fest for over half his lifetime. He’s also a child again, and this is obvious because his mother is there, smiling at him, and he’s smaller than her._

_She pulls him out of the house with her, and they lie in the snow._

_The snow is weirdly white, which is uncommon on Fest, a planet that is so steeped in gray. But Cassian goes with it, and watches his mother, and mirrors the way she moves her arms and legs in the snow, making a blurry but still distinct print._

_“Angels are watching over you, Cassi,” she murmurs, smiling._

_Cassian makes his own print next to hers._

_The sky is very bright._

_He smiles._

_A shadow passes over him, and he looks up, frowning._

_Zeferino stands there, studying Cassian with a soft smile._

_“It’s time to wake up, Cassi,” he says._

_Cassian frowns._

_He is suddenly not a child anymore, but an adult man, lying in snow that is no longer white, but a monotonous and unyielding gray._

_“Listen, Cassi.”_

_Cassian frowns._

_It is very quiet, here, in this patch of snow on Fest, but as he lies there in the cold, he hears a voice._

“Cassian.”

_He recognizes the voice, but feels like he hasn’t heard it in a very long time, and that it’s coming from somewhere very far away, and long ago._

“Please. Please.”

_“Jyn,” he breathes._

“Come back to me.”

_Zeferino grins._

_“Until we meet again,” he says, and disappears into the light._

 

* * *

 

For a long time, Cassian doesn’t speak.

But Jyn knows he’s _there._

He looks at her one day over breakfast, about three weeks since she woke up, as she’s talking, speaking in what is more or less a monologue to herself. She’s talking about her progress, about the physical therapy she’s undergoing to restore mobility to her pelvis, how her healing is slow but steady. The doctors are optimistic she’ll make a full recovery in this area, and her sprained wrist and bruised spine are quite sore, but all but fully healed.

But the burns; those are here to stay.

She glances up at him, lifting her cup of caf with the movement, and nearly drops the cup.

Because Cassian is _looking_ at her.

Like he recognizes her.

“Cass,” she breathes.

He blinks, and opens his mouth, but no sound comes out.

“That’s okay,” she whispers, because there is recognition in those brown eyes that have been so empty and blank for so long, that have looked at her with neutrality for three whole weeks, and this is such a huge improvement she thinks _she’s_ about to lose the ability to talk as well.

Slowly, he lifts a trembling hand, and touches her cheek.

She catches his hand, and holds it tight.

“Yes,” she whispers. “It’s me. Hi.”

 

* * *

 

The doctors tell her his mutism is clearly selective, and a side effect of trauma.

They think it was the crash that caused it, but Jyn remembers Cassian’s shocked and terrified face after watching Zeferino die, and the way he looked at her as the escape pod violently shook around them.

She also remembers how he got knocked out pretty quickly, and that he missed most of their rapid and horrifying descent.

(The memories of the crash slowly return to her, and she wishes they didn’t.)

Jyn believes the mutism _is_ because of trauma, but she thinks it’s due to a _lifetime_ of trauma, rather than just ten minutes.

She still doesn’t know what exactly happened between Cassian and Zeferino in the hangar on Scarif, doesn’t know what caused Zeferino to turn on the Empire and save Cassian _(again)_ , and definitely doesn’t know what made Cassian decide to trust him. She desperately wants to ask Cassian, to get answers, but she’s scared any questions relating to Zeferino will send him back into his fugue state.

Zeferino was not the first of his family Cassian saw die. He watched all of them die: Gabriel, over the holonet, on a planet far from home; Serafima, in the streets of Fest; Nerezza, from Zeferino’s own blaster shot. She has no idea why Zeferino’s death has cut Cassian so deeply.

All she can do is stay close to him, and remind him she’s there.

She sits at his side when he meets a doctor to get prostheses for his missing legs. Cassian is weirdly calm about the situation, she thinks. While she didn’t expect him to fully flip out, she did expect him to show a bit more emotion than wide eyes and a pained hiss as the prostheses are perfectly fitted to his thighs. They aren’t the fanciest prostheses, and she thinks even the Alliance would have made him better ones; but Cassian seems entirely content with them, following the doctor’s directions in how to test them out, and stretch with them, and learn how to get used to them.

“You’re oddly fine with this,” Jyn says, as soon as the doctor is out of the room.

Cassian looks at her, and gives a little shrug of his shoulders.

They’re developing a new language, a language where Cassian does not speak at all, and she has to translate his words through subtle body language cues. She’s had a little practice doing this; over the six years they’ve known each other, they’ve dealt with situations where verbal communication could give away their position, and get one or both of them killed. But all those times were short, contained moments; now, they exclusively communicate like this.

They’re both being treated by a psychiatrist--the same psychiatrist, in fact, because Roon doesn’t exactly have a plethora of psychiatrists to choose from--and the psychiatrist suggests that they might want to learn sign language.

But when Jyn asks Cassian, he vehemently shakes his head.

_No._

“Why not?” she demands.

She’s sure that sooner rather than later, he’ll want to tell her something he cannot communicate well without clear language.

But he only shakes his head again, his jaw tightening, and it clicks.

He doesn’t want to learn sign language, because he thinks it will become the _only_ language they ever communicate in.

“You’re scared of never speaking again,” she murmurs. “That sign language will give you an excuse not to.”

He looks at her, and nods once, eyes dark and sad.

She reaches out, and squeezes his hand.

“Take your time,” she says.

 

* * *

 

They’re both in physical therapy a few times a week; Cassian for his new legs, Jyn for her fractured pelvis.

She kind of hates how quickly Cassian takes to his prostheses, to the point he’s literally lapping her within two weeks.

“How are you so good at this?” she demands, scowling at him, as he moves in a slow, but smooth, jog. “Have you lost legs before?”

He laughs.

It’s the first time she’s heard him laugh since Scarif.

She’s so surprised, she almost falls flat on her face.

He catches her before she does.

 

* * *

 

Jyn would take a hundred physical therapy sessions over another session of debriding her burn wounds.

Debriding the burns, she is told, means removing her wounds, layer by layer, in search of healthy tissue underneath it all, tissue that can be salvaged, to allow new skin to grow. It is a grueling, horrifically painful procedure, and no matter how many times Jyn goes through it, she is completely unprepared for the pain.

It’s a hot, burning pain, and she wonders if this is ironic.

The doctor tells her the pain means it’s working, that she’s healing. Jyn isn’t sure she believes her.

Cassian goes with her every time.

He doesn’t speak (he never speaks) but he sits close to her, and lets her crush his hand in hers, and brushes his fingers over her hair and unburned face, as she screams and sobs.

He looks so sad during the procedure, but he never makes a move to leave.

He only stays close to her, and reminds her he’s there.

It’s all she’s ever wanted him to do for her.

 

* * *

 

They’re discharged after nearly five months in the hospital.

The doctors remind them both that they need to stay close by, as they aren’t anywhere near done healing yet. Jyn’s burns still need to be checked and debrided a couple times a week, and Cassian’s face and chest scar hasn’t fully closed up yet, leaving him exposed to infection.

Jyn has known the city they’re in to be called Nime, and that it’s a fairly large city (large by Roon standards, that is). The hospital staff refer to the city as a port city, and while on most planets that would typically mean it’s a port for starships, she quickly learns that it’s a _literal_ port city, located on the Roon Sea, with actual boats and ships docking in it.

But neither she nor Cassian have gotten to explore Nime, so when they are told they’ll be leaving the hospital soon, they plan for a whole day spent out in the city.

They learn that Nime is set perfectly halfway on the planet, so one half of the city is constantly sunlit, and the other is constantly dark.

The Roon Sea is the biggest body of water on the planet, but it still isn’t much to look at. It’s very dark, a blue so deep it looks like the night sky, and is only remarkable in that its darkness makes it look endless, like if you were to swim far enough out in it, you’d fall off the face of the planet.

They wander the city, realizing how quickly news travels fast on Roon, and how their unexpected crash-landing arrival was the biggest thing that had happened to Roon in years. Everyone they encounter knows exactly who they are, and Jyn guesses this isn’t too odd; Cassian’s scar is huge and distinct, and when her shirt sleeves slide up, they reveal the thick burn scars on her arms.

They’re quite the pair.

The Roonians take Cassian’s silence in stride.

“He’s got the shellshock,” a hardware store owner who identifies himself as a clone wars veteran tells her.

“Yeah,” Jyn agrees, looking at Cassian, who’s studying various wrenches.

The city seems to have embraced them, the scarred husband and burned wife.

The social workers in the hospital have set them up in a small apartment on the edge of the city, but also emphasized the importance of Jyn and Cassian giving back to the planet, in some small way.

Jyn studies the plains lying past the city, the sea on one side, and lands on an idea.

She starts to grow crops.

She remembers how her parents grew and cultivated crops on Lah’mu, and the weather on Roon isn’t that different. It’s temperate, but with a bit of a chill, and the air is clean and fresh. She uses the seawater to water the crops like her parents had, and builds a kind of moisture evaporator to help her, like the ones her parents used, and puts together a kind of energy panel like they did, for the days on Lah’mu when it was heavily overcast, when they did everything they could to soak up every little bit of sunlight. The energy panels are perfect now, as the darkness on this side of Roon does not go away, and light is difficult to come by, and contain.

The Roonians _love_ her crops, and the small inventions she uses to grow them.

She guesses she shouldn’t be too surprised at their enthusiasm; Roon is a planet that prides itself on living in a bygone era, so any new technology or invention is quite novel. She feels a little silly though, at thinking anything she’s doing could be considered futuristic, since it’s all gardening and tech the Ersos learned from earlier generations. But she sees the interest and delight among the Roonians, and decides it isn’t ridiculous at all.

Neither she nor Cassian would be alive without their generosity.

It takes Cassian longer to settle on work. The vast majority of his skills deal in bloodshed and destruction, or thievery and stealth, and none of these traits have a place on Roon, or, really, with Cassian as he is now. He flounders for a bit, following Jyn around her fields, shadowing her in the markets, taking it all in.

And then he encounters a droid with a broken motivator.

The droid is a droid in the hospital, naturally, the hospital they both still visit frequently. It’s a droid they’ve both met before, as it’s an FX-series medical assistant droid, one that had introduced itself as FX-4, and tends to hover in the back of the room during their hospital visits.

During one of Jyn’s painful debriding sessions, FX-4 goes to help her doctor, and suddenly stalls.

The doctor sighs.

“Bad motivator,” she explains, eyeing the droid. “We worry he’s on his last legs.”

On Roon, that usually means waiting for the droid to die entirely, and then salvage him for useable parts.

But Cassian frowns.

He approaches FX-4, making a gesture of wanting to look the droid over, which it allows.

He takes FX-4 home with them at the end of the appointment.

Jyn lies on the small couch in the front room, shivering her way through the aftershocks of the debriding, and she listens as Cassian takes FX-4 apart, checking over its pieces, making small piles. She has no idea what he’s looking for, exactly, but he seems to find it, his eyes brightening after half an hour.

When he returns FX-4 two days later, FX-4 moves like a factory-fresh droid.

The hospital is overjoyed.

They start sending their droids to Cassian for repair work, and then so do other public service buildings around Nime, and this is how droid repair work becomes Cassian’s new career.

The droids chirp their gratitude at him, and Jyn overhears one Basic-speaking droid ask Cassian how he came to know so much about droids.

Cassian’s smile is sad, and he shrugs at the droid.

But he and Jyn know the answer.

It was Nerezza, and the Fest Rebellion, who taught him how rebuild, repair, and reprogram droids.

And it was K-2SO who helped him perfect his knowledge.

 

* * *

 

Winter comes to Roon.

Jyn’s fractured pelvis has healed, though it still aches in the cold, as do Cassian’s legs, and so they are encouraged to spend a little time outside each day, to try and teach their somewhat-new bodies to acclimate to extreme changes in temperature.

They go on little walks around Nime, with Jyn significantly more bundled up than Cassian. Her skin that was burnt is so damaged that it’s no longer able to retain heat, leaving her always feeling cold, no matter the actual temperature.

On one of their walks, they come across a frozen pond.

There are a half dozen or so people milling about, and she watches, awestruck, as a few of them skate onto the ice. Jyn is vaguely aware of ice skating, in that she understands it’s a thing people do on frozen planets, but has never had the opportunity to see it.

Or do it herself.

They go back the next day, and go ice skating.

Cassian grew up on Fest, one such frozen planet, and has skated before, but never without his natural legs. He’s wobbly, like a baby Bantha trying to stand, but she doesn’t dare laugh at him; not only because his lack of balance is due to his amputated legs, but because she is a far worse skater than him.

She’s almost offended at this, and not sure why this could be. Her balance is perfectly fine, and her pelvis is even again, and she still has all her limbs. A child who comes to help Cassian keep her upright tells Jyn it could simply be because she’s a grown-up who has never skated before.

“I can still learn new tricks!” Jyn yells, watching the child skate away, in a fashion she considers to be unnecessarily extravagant.

There is a tall, heavy willow tree that’s somehow managed to grow smack in the middle of the pond, and she clings to it.

Cassian skates a little ways ahead of her, and then turns, and beckons her.

“Come help me,” she insists.

He raises an eyebrow.

“I can’t get to you from here!”

He gestures at the numerous others skating easily enough around them.

“I’ve never skated before!”

He rolls his eyes.

“What if I fall and re-fracture my pelvis?”

He rolls his eyes again, and holds both his arms out pointedly, and she reads the gesture easily enough.

_Would I really let you fall?_

She sighs.

Slowly, she inches away from the tree, back onto the ice.

The other skaters give her a wide berth, her amateur status very pronounced, and Jyn clutches her coat in her gloved hands, staring down at her skates, trying desperately to keep moving and not fall down.

Cassian watches her, and waits.

When she reaches him, she lets herself tip forward, and he catches her, gloved hands carefully holding her burned elbows.

She can’t help but laugh.

“I did it,” she breathes. “Wow. Check that one off the bucket list, I guess.”

Cassian’s hand brushes her cheek.

“Although, I dunno, after everything, maybe I should think about how _learning to ice skate_ really isn’t that big a deal, especially not next to _getting my skin picked off every week_ but I’ll take what I can--”

“Jyn.”

For a moment, she doesn’t know who’s said her name.

But then the timbre and sound of the voice registers, even if it’s far hoarser than it’s ever been.

She stares up at Cassian in shock.

It’s been six months since Scarif.

Six months since Cassian last spoke.

And the first word he says is her name.

“Cassian,” she whispers.

The scar that bisects his face diagonally is still raised and angry-looking, but his eyes are just as warm as she remembers, and while his smile is now unnaturally crooked, it’s still true.

He squeezes her hand.

His first sentence follows his first word.

“I love you.”

 

* * *

 

Cassian tells her what happened.

About Zeferino.

About the things Zeferino told him, the things Cassian has spent the last six months on Roon puzzling over, and trying to process.

She understands that while he was mourning the loss of his brother, he was also dealing with the grief that comes with realizing you did not understand your family, or your childhood; that you might have misunderstood things about your sister, and the future she wanted for you; and the idea that the person you are is not _you._

“I’m so sorry I checked out on you like I did,” Cassian murmurs, and his voice is still hoarse from lack of use, but she delights in the sound. “You’ve been very, very strong, and patient. And you’ve also been going through a very difficult time. And I wasn’t here for you. And I… I can’t express how sorry I am about that.”

Jyn looks at him, studying how dejected he is, how _exhausted_ he is.

He’s acknowledged that his brain is slower than it used to be, how he struggles with putting together some thoughts, how speaking is not only a challenge because he hasn’t spoken for so long, but because speaking is a kind of strenuous activity for him now. He describes blank spots in his memory, how he sometimes forgets how to do basic tasks, how he walks into rooms and doesn’t remember why he’s gone into them. His hands tremble almost violently, and he has a terribly difficult time falling asleep, and he tells her he almost feels like a stranger in a body that doesn’t even feel like _his_ anymore.

Jyn listens.

She thinks about how she has always wanted Cassian to come back to her; but more than that, she’s wanted him to simply stay with her. And he figured that out recently, on Eadu, and so he knows this as well.

“There isn’t anything to forgive,” she whispers.

She holds his hand in hers.

She thinks of how he spent three weeks in his fugue state, before something woke him up (he doesn’t know what it was), causing him to look at her over breakfast and really _see_ her.

He might not have spoken in six months, but it’s clear:

“You were still here,” she says.

At long last, she begins to cry.

 

* * *

 

Cassian thinks Jyn has been putting her grief on hold.

She’s been carrying them both, focusing on understanding their injuries, and their recoveries. She’s been cultivating her crops and her garden, and observing Cassian as he tinkers with and fixes various droids. She’s been getting them out of the apartment, and into the city, cajoling them both to take walks and to learn their new bodies.

So when he finally wakes up, and starts talking again, she breaks down.

It’s his turn to carry them both.

They have a lot to grieve.

Jyn never had time to properly grieve the loss of Saw Gerrera, nor the loss of Jedha, a moon she had visited as a child. And she definitely didn’t have enough time to grieve the loss of her father on Eadu, nor grieve the true brutality of the weapon he created.

She finally has time now.

She cries more than she ever has in the six years he’s known her. It’s quite easy to set her off, from something as simple as the sight of a father and daughter holding hands in the street, to any voice speaking in an accent that matches Jyn’s. She weeps when she notices a traveler with hair like Saw’s, or a woman dressed in a soft brown tunic. One time Cassian brings home a droid that reminds her of one that worked on the Erso Homestead, and she locks herself away in their room for the rest of the day.

Most of the time, when she cries, she hides from him.

He isn’t sure why; it’s possible she’s ashamed of her grief, but she spent six months watching him in an incredibly weak and vulnerable state, and it’s not like he’s ever shamed her for expressing emotion.

He brings it up, one day.

“If you touch me, it’ll just make me cry more,” she admits.

Jyn’s prickly exterior has always been something of a front, and so he isn’t too surprised to hear this. He remembers how she collapsed on the floor of the Partisans’ hide-out on Jedha, after viewing her father’s message, and how Saw hesitated over her. He knew touching her would only heighten her grief, and so he stood back.

Cassian stays back now.

But he never leaves her, and never goes out of reach.

He finds ways to cheer her up.

On one of their many slow, meandering walks, they come across a small field of wildflowers, and he picks some, and hands them to her. She tears up, of course, but then she smiles. She tries to braid them in her hair, but the still-raw burns on her chest and arms prevent her from completing the movement, and so he takes the flowers, and braids them for her.

“Who taught you to braid?” she asks, sitting still in front of him.

“Nerezza,” he replies, as easy as anything.

Though Nerezza preferred a very short haircut in her teenage years, he vaguely remembers being quite young, and helping her braid her hair when it was waist-length.

It is far easier to talk about Nerezza now than it ever was before.

He’s slowly coming to understand her.

_“Be brave, Cassi.”_

_I’m trying to be,_ he thinks now.

To be brave, going into this new, unexpected life.

Their first hospital visit since Cassian starts speaking again is an eventful one, where the doctor freezes after Cassian asks about how many debriding sessions Jyn might have left.

“You’re talking!” the doctor exclaims.

“Oh, yes,” Cassian says, and Jyn smiles.

“You have an accent!” the doctor adds, still very startled.

Jyn seems to find this way funnier than it should be, because she bursts out laughing.

She’s never laughed in this room, the room where her skin is peeled away in search of healthy skin, and the noise is just as shocking as Cassian speaking for the first time in six months.

 

* * *

 

If he’s being honest, he’s more alarmed by the scar on his face and chest than he is about the loss of his legs.

He thinks it’s because he can still walk.

And the scar is more visible.

People treat him differently now than they did before.

Cassian’s competency as a spy had relied on his ability to blend in, to be unremarkable. The thick scar that bisects his face diagonally makes him unusual, notorious, and easy to remember. It causes people to stare at him, to gasp at the harshness of the scar.

Neighbors, shop owners, and vendors in the market he and Jyn frequent ask him if it hurts.

“Sometimes,” he admits.

It still hurts a bit when he displays a lot of emotion, though _a lot of emotion_ can simply be a smile or a frown, as the scar pulls on his facial muscles. The heavily-scarred bridge of his nose aches too; the first time he sneezed since the scarring was astonishingly painful, and Jyn might have laughed at his look of shock if not for the fact his eyes watered involuntarily.

He allows the stares, and the questions, but an encounter in the street one day shakes him.

Winter is leaving, but the snow has not yet fully melted, meaning the streets are a little icy.

He and Jyn are walking back to their apartment from the market when they encounter a group of children playing in the streets.

He doesn’t know what the game is, but it involves a ball, and a lot of running, and a lot of yelling, and he steps aside as a boy, no older than eight, comes barreling towards him and Jyn, only for the boy to slip on a patch of ice.

Instinctively, Cassian reaches out, and steadies the boy before he can fall.

“Careful,” Cassian warns.

The boy looks up at him. His eyes widen in a way that would almost be comical, if they weren’t so clearly _afraid._

He runs away without another word.

Cassian stands there, bereft.

“Cass,” Jyn whispers, and she presses her hand to his back.

He swallows, hard, and they walk home.

“It’s strange,” he murmurs, as they sit in the quiet of the apartment. “That they’re frightened of me. Now. I… I used to be a far more terrifying man. I did horrible, terrible things, and no one… No one ever looked at me with _fear_. And I don’t do anything like that anymore, and now they’re… People are afraid of me.”

“People are stupid,” Jyn says, automatically, and he can’t help but smile.

“I guess my spying days are over,” he notes.

Jyn only looks at him.

He knows what she’s thinking.

In the nine months they’ve been on Roon, neither of them has spoken of, or made an attempt to contact, the Alliance.

 

* * *

 

The doctor estimates Jyn still has three months of debriding the burns left.

About a full year’s worth of treatments, twice a week.

Jyn is starting to believe there is no skin left under it all, that one treatment session they’ll go too deep, and get to her organs directly, and she’ll bleed out.

Her psychiatrist tells her this fear is absolutely rooted in the trauma of the crash.

He encourages her to keep working on getting used to her body.

She stands in front of the mirror at home, and surveys it. She takes in the severe discoloration that mars her chest and abdomen, how her skin is oddly dented in places, from where parts of her burned away. The skin over her ribs is still horribly tender and thin, and the most severely burned parts are still heavily bandaged. She looks like a patchwork doll, like a small child attempted to make a toy and got bored halfway through, or ran out of material.

Jyn has never been vain, has never particularly cared about her appearance, but she’s always been firm in the knowledge that she’s a human woman.

She looks at herself now, and thinks she isn’t so sure.

“Jyn.”

She jumps, and spins, trying to cover herself up.

Cassian stands in the doorway.

She thinks the prostheses actually make him move more _quietly._

“Sorry, just…” She looks away, diving for the loose blanket on the bed, and wrapping it around herself.

Cassian watches this movement, and then looks up at her, studying her face.

“Why are you hiding?” he asks.

_Why are you hiding from me?_

She shrugs, and even that movement makes the burns on her shoulders ache.

“I look… Different,” she says, because she thinks this is kinder than saying, _I am mangled and deformed and I don’t recognize myself._

“I do, too,” Cassian reminds her, as if they both aren’t very aware of the scar bisecting his face, nor the fact his legs have been halved. “I scare children.”

“Yeah, but I…” She sighs.

Cassian studies her face, eyes slightly narrowed, and she thinks of all the times he’s been able to pick up her thoughts and feelings based simply off her expression.

Naturally, he doesn’t fail this time.

“You think I’m going to be scared of you?” he asks, incredulous.

“Not _scared,”_ she amends. “But I worry you…”

She trails off.

He gets it.

“I’m still attracted to you,” he murmurs.

 _“Why?”_ Jyn demands. “I don’t even… I don’t look anything like how I used to. My skin, it’s… It’s raw, and cold, and rough, and… Everything is scarred, and I’m literally _missing_ some of my body, and it’s changed _shape,_ and I… I wouldn’t blame you if you couldn’t even stand to look at me.”

Cassian stares at her.

He looks so sad, and she’s suddenly very nervous.

“Cass--”

He walks into the room, until he’s standing right in front of her.

He picks up her hand, and lifts it, pressing it to the scar that has broken his face.

“Are you afraid of me?” he asks.

“No,” she says, automatically, because she has never once been _afraid_ of Cassian.

Even that first time she met him--when he followed her around the streets of Takodana--she wasn’t afraid. Irritated, nervous, maybe; but not afraid. And when he looked at her with such coldness on Eadu, she was angry, and upset, and grief-stricken; but not afraid of him.

“You still think I’m attractive,” he says.

“Yes,” she says, a little annoyed now, “But this isn’t about you--”

“Everything you said makes me think it very much is.”

She shuts her mouth, because, well. He might be right.

Slowly, giving her the opportunity to shove him away, he bends his head, and presses his lips to the burn wound perched high on her neck.

She closes her eyes.

“I followed you on Takodana because you were the brightest thing I’d ever seen,” he tells her, softly. “You were this… This remarkable beam of light, and the only thing I wanted was to get close to it. To you. And I’ve never stopped. I always want to be near you. That will never change. No matter what you think you look like, you’ll always be the brightest thing I’ve ever seen. Because the light; that’s _you,_ Jyn.”

She feels tears gathering in her closed eyes.

“You’re _it_ for me,” Cassian says. “I’m in love with you, and I always will be. It’s a choice I made years ago. I married you with the understanding that I was done, that you would be all I could ever want, or need. It’s, perhaps, the only belief I’ve never lost, or put to the side. I’m not leaving you, Jyn. Not for anything. Please believe me.”

She bites her lip, but nods, and lets herself cry.

Gently, he pulls the blanket away from her.

He kisses every burn wound she has.

 

* * *

 

“A lot of them still can’t retain heat.”

“The doctor said that’s normal.”

“But some of the feeling’s returning.”

“That’s a very good thing, Jyn.”

“I know. Until it’s discomfort, because your beard is rubbing against the _very_ damaged skin on my navel.”

 

* * *

 

He shaves.

He shaves off his beard, and moustache. He even cuts his hair a bit, so she can see his ears and more of his forehead.

Jyn thinks this is a more startling change than the scar.

He looks so _young,_ the skin around the scar oddly smooth, and she gets a glimpse of Cassian as a teenager.

He’s now twenty-seven, and she’s twenty-three, but she feels like the older one.

He stops in the middle of the street one day, frowning, and looks at his reflection in a store window.

“I look like my father,” he notes, studying his shorter hair, his clean-shaven face.

She steps to his side, and takes his hand.

“No,” she corrects him. “You look like my husband.”

 

* * *

 

They lost their marriage pendants in the crash, and for a year, they don’t do anything to replace them.

They have a lot of other things to worry about, other things to prioritize.

And besides; their marriage has never been stronger.

They have spent everyday together for nearly a year, waking up together and falling asleep together. They have an apartment of their own, and run errands together, and attend doctors’ appointments together.

They might not have a tangible relationship status, but no one has ever doubted that they love each other.

“What marriage traditions do Roonians have?”

Jyn asks this question of Taissa, the fifty-something woman who runs her preferred gardening outpost. Taissa is a born-and-raised Roonian, whose parents were wayward travelers from nearby Rishi, who enjoyed Roon so much they decided to stay. Jyn thinks of Taissa as a friend, a belief cemented by the fact that when Jyn started wearing short-sleeved shirts (winter has melted away, bringing a surprisingly humid spring) Taissa was one of the few who never gawked at the thick burns meandering over her arms.

“I’ve seen far worse wounds from Mynock attacks, dear,” Taissa said, and Jyn left it at that.

Taissa considers Jyn’s question now.

“Roonstones,” she says.

Jyn has been on Roon long enough to know of Roonstones. They’re extremely valuable crystals, some with powerful properties, found in the Tawntoom province of the planet; and in an attempt to reduce Roon’s galactic importance due to the Roonstones, an Imperial governor destroyed the biggest cache of the crystals fifteen years earlier. The Empire believes they now have the only remaining Roonstones in the galaxy.

But if Jyn knows anything about the Empire, it’s how it tends to underestimate its people.

Roonstones still exist on Roon; if you know where to look.

There is a cache located in a cave off the Roon Sea. Outsiders and foreigners are banned from knowing the location of the cave, but Jyn and Cassian have lived on Roon for over a year, and have given back to the planet for over half that time, and so Taissa takes them to the cave one early spring morning.

It’s very cold inside, and dark compared to the sunlight that has dominated this side of the planet for months, and at first it looks completely unremarkable.

“So do you,” Taissa says, amused, when Jyn voices this opinion.

Cassian smiles.

They dig.

Taissa hovers nearby, taking stock of the natural flora that is found within the cave, but ultimately leaving Jyn and Cassian to their searching. They dig through black sea soil, around heavy black rocks, brushing aside dark green seaweed. They dig as the sun rises, lighting up the cave, and it is with this added light that Jyn spots a glimmer of blue.

The stone is very small, only about the size of the pad of her thumb.

Taissa is impressed.

“The bigger stones are gone, or much further down,” she says, looking over Jyn’s find. “This is a good size.”

The Roonstone is a dark blue, like the sky at dusk just before nightfall.

“The flowers you wore in your hair, on our wedding day, were close to this color,” Cassian notes.

Following Taissa’s direction, they cut the stone in half. Cassian goes through the various bits of spare metals he’s gathered over his months of droid work, and finds enough usable silver to make them matching rings, each with a half of Roonstone.

While Taissa did mention rings as being a Roonian wedding tradition, she also mentioned how the Roonstones can be used for other things, and so Jyn had pointed out they could have pendants again. But Cassian had firmly said no, his fingers brushing over the scar skirting his neck.

He refuses to have anything cold or metal near his neck, prefers loose shirts and open air on his clavicle, and Jyn wonders if he remembers the crash on some subliminal level, and remembers the phrik of the escape pod nearly cutting his head off.

She doesn’t mind the rings.

Part of her worries a pendant would have irritated the burns on her chest.

And besides: the rings are of Roon, and are symbolic of this new start for the two of them.

 

* * *

 

Fourteen months after they crashed on Roon, they make a pilgrimage back to the crash site.

Nature has taken its course, and so there is very little visible to illustrate the site, save for a couple pieces of rusted, jagged metal sticking out of the mud, and the fact that the mud is uneven, deeper in some places than others.

Jyn squats, and runs her fingers over a thin piece of phrik. Cassian stands behind her, grimacing at the sight of her hand on the sharp edge.

“Doesn’t look like much,” she notes, getting to her feet.

“It’s been a while,” Cassian murmurs. “The weather’s changed the mudfield a bit.”

About a hundred yards away, she can see a giant, long-necked saurian creature, meandering slowly across the mud.

She now knows it’s a creature called a Shamunaar.

It is one of many things she would not have known a year earlier.

She reaches out, wrapping an arm around Cassian’s waist, and he wraps an arm around her shoulders, and they walk back into Nime.

Back home.

 

* * *

 

Eighteen months.

A year and a half.

Cassian is twenty-eight years old, and Jyn is twenty-four.

He’s quieter, now. He prefers a clean-shaven look, using a laser razor exclusively because he still flinches whenever anything cold or metal touches the long, jagged scar that bisects his face, and cuts across his neck, chest, and arm. His hands tremble for no apparent reason, and his sleep is disturbed, and he often has nightmares he doesn’t remember, waking only with his brother’s name on his lips, and hands scrabbling for his missing legs. He’s a little slower, too, speaking with more hesitation, taking more time to get his thoughts together.

But he’s kind, and thoughtful, and the best droid repairman in Nime.

Jyn is quieter, too. But she’s also more prone to mood swings, still dealing with the all-too-clear trauma of the crash, and she vacillates between loud sobs and angry screams. She wakes from nightmares with her skin prickling and hair sweaty. She has to leave any room with an open flame in it. She likes to have time to herself, enjoying hours alone in her fields of crops, but she takes time to have tea with Taissa, and has every meal with Cassian. Her burns still perpetually ache, but she’s learning to be less self-conscious about them, to the point she wears tank tops and shorts while harvesting in the summer, though she remains vigilant about not adding sunburns to the scars.

She’s patient, and affectionate, and known for her ambitious crops in Nime.

They’re happy.

They’re a little broken, a little messy, but they’re together, and they’re happy.

_“Do you never wish we could have more?”_

This; this is the more.

This is everything they ever wanted for themselves.

 

* * *

 

Roon is isolated, and so they rarely think about the Alliance.

Things might have continued this way, if they weren’t in Taissa’s shop one day, for her to look at Cassian, frown, and say, “Aren’t you from Fest?”

Cassian stills, and looks at her. “Uh, yeah. I am.”

“Huh. I thought you were, but I couldn’t remember for sure. Did you hear the news?”

Cassian’s hands begin to shake, and he feels Jyn step closer, ready to catch the packet of seeds he’s holding in case he should lose control and drop them.

“What’s happened?” he asks.

“Take a look,” Taissa replies, and hands him a newspaper.

(A _newspaper._ It took him and Jyn _months_ to get used to that.)

Jyn leans in to get a better look.

The newspaper is the rebel-affiliated one on Roon, the one Taissa prefers to read, and the one Cassian and Jyn read exclusively. He scans the headline, and he sees the front story is about Fest. He can feel a headache coming on, the kind of thing he gets sometimes when he reads, but he’s determined to figure out what has happened to his homeworld, and so he pushes through it.

He’s glad he did.

The Alliance has attacked the Imperial Weapons Research Facility on Fest. They’ve destroyed the Research Facility, and stolen a few AT-PT Walkers. The Alliance walked away without any fatalities, while the Empire’s forces took several losses.

“Oh,” he breathes.

Jyn, a faster reader than him, suddenly stills, and grabs his arm. Her grip is so tight, her ring is threatening to leave a dent in his forearm.

“Cass, look,” she whispers. “Look at the name of the squadron that destroyed it.”

He follows her trembling finger, and sees it.

_Rogue Squadron._

His breath catches.

“There’s no Rogue Squadron,” he murmurs, as if Jyn is not aware of this.

“There is now,” Jyn replies, and she looks up at him, all wide eyes.

Cassian turns to Taissa. “When did this happen?”

She shrugs. “Might’ve been months ago. Fest is across the galaxy, and news travels disjointedly to get here. But it _did_ happen, even if that Imperial rag--” and by that, she means the Imperial-sympathizing newspaper on Roon “--Doesn’t mention it at all. Anyway. I thought you might be interested, you being from Fest and all.”

Taissa doesn’t know who Cassian and Jyn are.

Or who they _were._

No one on Roon does.

They’ve never explained how they ended up in a phrik-enforced escape pod, or where the ship they were ejected from was flying from, or why they even needed to flee that ship. Roon is, technically, Imperial-controlled, even if it has its fair share of rebel supporters.

But if the Empire were to find out that two of the rebels who stole the Death Star plans were here…

They’ve only just started getting themselves sorted out.

They wait until they’re safely locked in their apartment, and then they look at each other.

“Rogue Squadron,” Cassian says.

“Rogue Squadron,” Jyn confirms, and she beams. “It’s for us, isn’t it?”

“Probably,” Cassian replies, running a hand through his short hair, his ring briefly catching in it.

Jyn asks the question they have been dancing around for months:

“Do we find them?”

Cassian is sure that the Alliance has long assumed him and Jyn to be dead.

He’s absolutely fine with this.

He knows he can’t fight again, damaged and skittish as he is. He doesn’t even want to fight again. He’s just so tired, and drained.

“We can,” he says, slowly.

“They aren’t on Yavin 4 anymore,” Jyn says, thoughtfully. They heard that the Alliance had abandoned the base shortly after the destruction of the Death Star, and guessed it meant the Empire had found them there. “I’m not sure… Do you know where they would have gone?”

“No.”

Jyn bites her lip.

“We can start asking around,” she says. “Travelers must know how to contact the Alliance, or where to find a recruitment outpost. It can’t be too hard.”

Cassian swallows.

“The thing is,” he murmurs, “It is not the Alliance I want to find.”

They haven’t spoken of Chirrut, Baze, or Bodhi in eighteen months.

He isn’t sure why.

He suspects it’s because they just don’t know how to talk about them.

Instantly, Jyn knows what he means.

She nods.

“Then we don’t find the Alliance,” she says. “We find Rogue One.”

 

* * *

 

Finding a single team within a squadron within a bigger umbrella operation, with that bigger umbrella operation being a Military, and not wanting to alert that Military to the fact that previously-believed to be dead soldiers are still alive, is no easy task.

Cassian can only think of one possible way.

They have to go back to Yavin 4.

The Alliance isn’t there, but Cassian and Jyn’s old room is, and it’s possible that within that room, buried in the dirt in the back of the closet, buried by Cassian himself shortly after the Alliance moved to Yavin 4, is a radio.

It’s an unremarkable radio; save that if you know the right channels, you can connect to an Alliance team.

Rogue One.

If they’re even using the same code and message system.

It’s the only shot Cassian and Jyn have.

They leave Roon two weeks later.

Nime makes a big deal of their departure, with the whole city seemingly coming out to see them off. Cassian thinks he never fully appreciated how tied he and Jyn became to Roon, how many friends and acquaintances they made. He can’t help but feel emotional at thanking the doctors at the hospital, one last time, for their literally life-saving work, and thanking the owners of the stores, restaurants, and public service organizations for their generosity.

Jyn promises to message Taissa, who makes her promise that they will come back to Roon, someday.

If only to visit.

It is an easy promise to make.

Cassian and Jyn don’t even want to leave Roon.

But they have to find their team.

They have to find the rest of their family.

It’s been so long already.

They get a Chiss long-range shuttle, an incredibly outdated transport ship, which is typical for Roon. It’s also typical for Roon in that it has no business being here but is, anyway.

The shuttle is small, but that’s perfect.

Cassian is far more scared of flying than he expected to be.

He trembles as they take off, and it is only Jyn’s hand on his shoulder that keeps him going.

“It’s okay,” she murmurs. “We’re safe. This isn’t like last time.”

They haven’t flown in nineteen months.

When Cassian blinks, he thinks he can see Zeferino’s sad face looking down at him.

When he blinks again, he feels hot metal slicing across his face, and the taste of blood in his mouth.

He focuses.

They make their way along the accessible route through the Cloak of the Sith, and they both studiously keep their eyes away from the debris and rock they fly past.

He punches the hyperdrive, and they speed off into the stars.

 

* * *

 

Base One is deserted.

It looks a little like a ghost town.

It would not be incorrect to say Cassian and Jyn are, in fact, ghosts.

They walk through the halls of the base, the base that is ransacked and torn apart, and it’s unclear if the destruction was wrought by the Alliance on its way out, or by the Empire, desperately searching for scraps of helpful information. The flora of Yavin 4 has also grown swiftly, encroaching every surface and wall.

Cassian takes in the command center, the room where Rogue One was given the mission to Jedha. There are thick vines around the large table in the middle of the room, and the glass star charts are cracked, or broken entirely.

The mission to Jedha feels like it happened a thousand years ago, and to someone else.

Yavin 4 is just as warm as ever, but Jyn is bundled up, her burns unaccustomed to this warmer planet, and so she winces every now and then. She adjusts the tan, bantha-hair scarf around her neck, taking in the sight of the completely empty hangar.

Cassian thinks of how she used to avoid wearing tans, the official-unofficial colors of the Alliance, and how she looks like one of them now, when she has never been less a part of it.

He’s dressed like she used to dress, in blacks, his shirt loose, because the warm air feels nice on the scar crossing his collarbone.

They are both opposites, and the same.

They walk into their old room.

They never had many things, and so it’s clear someone has gone through the space, and taken what they could. Their clothes and weapons are gone, the bed stripped, a fine layer of dust and dirt on every surface. Jyn brushes her fingers over the top of the desk in the corner, while Cassian goes to the closet.

He drops to his knees on the floor, wincing a little at how the prostheses grind the dirt, and he starts to dig.

He doesn’t have to dig far.

Jyn gasps when he emerges, the radio in hand.

“I guess the Empire didn’t bother to dig in the closet,” Cassian murmurs.

They sit on the bare bed, uncaring of the grime they add to their clothes.

“Does it work?” Jyn asks.

“We’ll find out.”

The radio itself _does_ work, which he mostly expected.

He pauses over the buttons for a moment.

And feels hope drain away.

“What?” Jyn demands, reading his hunched shoulders.

“I can’t remember the code,” he whispers.

The brain trauma he endured in the crash scrambled his personality, and memory. He’s forgotten some things. And he realizes, now, that the code for Rogue One is one of those things.

“Oh,” Jyn breathes.

“I only remember the code to reach Kay directly. I’m sorry, I--”

“Don’t be,” she says, quickly, leaning into him, wrapping an arm around his shoulders. “This was always a long-shot, anyway. We can come up with something else. Maybe we’ll find something around here that’ll help.”

He nods. “Right.”

Jyn gets to her feet, giving the room one last appraisal, and Cassian stares at the radio in his hands.

He knows it’s hopeless. He knows K-2SO is dead.

But he still finds himself typing in the code to reach K-2SO, the code connected to the literal code that made up K-2SO himself. The code he inserted into his reprogramming of K-2SO, to ensure he always had a way to find the droid if they got separated.

His message is short, but he thinks it sums up everything he and K-2SO stood for, what they built together, now that K-2SO is dead and Cassian Andor is a ghost of himself.

_Rogue One, signing off._

He gets to his feet, and goes to turn the radio off, when it suddenly beeps.

Jyn turns around.

They look at it.

There’s a new message.

 **_This_ ** _is Rogue One._

 

* * *

 

The first time Jyn woke up on Roon, she woke up assuming that she had died.

Over the past nineteen months since then, she’s come to understand she didn’t die. She’s believed it.

Until she sees a message claiming to be from Rogue One, a message that has supposedly originated from a dead droid.

 _We did die,_ she thinks.

 

* * *

 

_Who is this?_

_Who is THIS? How did you get this code?_

_I programmed it._

 

* * *

 

_Cassian?_

_Who is this?_

_I am K-2SO, a member of Rogue One._

_K-2SO is dead._

_Cassian Andor is dead._

 

* * *

 

_I’m not dead. Not yet._

_This is Cassian?_

_Yes. Is this really Kay?_

_Yes!_

 

* * *

 

“We can’t be sure,” Cassian murmurs, Jyn staring wide-eyed at the rapid fire messaging. “It’s possible the Empire hijacked the code, when they found whatever remained of Kay on Scarif. They might have been able to recover some information on the Alliance from it. This probably isn’t Kay.”

“Can you ask it something only Kay would know?”

He thinks about it.

His final message gets to the point:

_If this really is Kay; then meet me back at the beginning._

 

* * *

 

“The Alliance knows I found Kay on Fondor,” Cassian says. “But they never knew where, specifically. Only Kay knew. So, if this is the Empire… They might know, too.”

Jyn and Cassian are camped out in an abandoned warehouse in the Fondor Shipyard. Everything smells of grease and metal, and Jyn is shivering in the cold. Cassian is leaning against the wall opposite her, face turned towards the half-open window, eyeing the bottom floor of the warehouse.

“Kay walked past me,” he murmurs. “He was… Supposed to be guarding one of the warehouses. They were building an… Kriff. I can’t remember anymore. Some kind of Star Destroyer, probably. I was here to spy on the production. I was… I was furious at what I saw. So much power. Evil. I saw a KX-series security droid, and I tricked it into following me here, and then I just… I took it.”

She smiles at what she is sure is a sanitized version of what really happened.

“Draven was furious,” Cassian continues. “And he thought I was crazy. He wasn’t the only one. I brought Kay back to the Corellian Resistance base. He saw everything. They told me that I’d have to destroy him the second he illustrated he was fighting the reprogramming.” Cassian shrugs. “But he never did. He stayed with us. He chose us.”

“He chose you,” Jyn murmurs.

Cassian looks at her.

“He did,” he agrees.

The door below them opening has them both straightening.

They both have blasters, but she’s sure they’re terribly rusty. They haven’t shot at anyone since Scarif. And Cassian has a violent tremor now, and Jyn’s arms can’t move as quickly as they used to, what with all the scarring.

If this is the Empire, here to find out exactly who was trying to reach a dead droid; then Cassian and Jyn are unlikely to walk out of the warehouse alive.

Cassian reaches out, and squeezes Jyn’s hand.

They stare down at the floor below.

A man has walked in, and is looking around, an orange flight suit making him an obvious target.

Another man follows, and he is far bulkier, dressed in a thick coat, heavy blaster at the ready.

Next comes a tall KX-series security droid.

Last comes a third man, comparatively thin, wielding a lightbow.

This third man turns sightless blue eyes up to the ceiling, locking on the window Cassian and Jyn are peeking out of.

“Little star,” Chirrut Imwe calls. “It’s been some time.”

 

* * *

 

Bodhi hugs Jyn so tightly she thinks he might re-bruise her spine.

They’re both crying, but their tears are tears of amazement, and joy.

“We thought you were _dead,”_ Bodhi exclaims. His orange flight suit is a little grubby, wrinkly and stained with oil, and he looks exhausted, like he hasn’t slept in days; she learns later that he actually hasn’t, that he’d only just touched down when Baze had come running to him on the tarmac, claiming that K-2SO had received a message from Cassian Andor.

“We thought we were too, for a while,” Jyn admits.

K-2SO cannot stop staring at Cassian.

“What happened to your _face?”_ he demands, and he sounds almost offended.

“Almost got it torn off,” Cassian says, shrugging, his smile crooked with the scar, but nonetheless true. “Now ask me about my legs.”

“What happened to your _legs?!”_

Chirrut wraps Jyn up in a hug so warm she feels like she’s lying in sunlight.

“We missed you, little star,” he murmurs.

“I’m sorry it took us so long,” she whispers.

“You took exactly the time you needed. No more, no less.”

Baze embraces Cassian warmly, far more warmly than the two men ever hugged before.

“I didn’t make a back-up of Kay,” Cassian says, still bewildered. “I didn’t, I--”

“I did,” Baze says, and Jyn thinks, _Of course._

Baze, who has always had an odd, unexpectedly warm relationship with K-2SO. Baze, who has the most advanced and detailed knowledge of tech and droids outside Cassian.

“It took a while, to decide to bring him back,” Baze admits. “I was not sure Kay would want to live in a galaxy where Cassian Andor did not.”

K-2SO does not dispute this, and Cassian looks very touched.

It also took a while to find a discarded KX-series Imperial security droid to insert K-2SO into; Baze was certain the droid would accept nothing less than his same body.

“But Bodhi needed a friend,” Baze adds. “And Chirrut and I wanted to have all the family we could.”

Rogue One is splintered.

Bodhi flies under the Rogue One name, with Rogue Squadron. He’s been flying with them since he officially joined the Alliance following Scarif, and was part of the team that destroyed the Weapons Research Facility on Fest.

Cassian hugs him very tightly at this news.

Chirrut and Baze mostly train new recruits. Chirrut is adept at hand-to-hand combat (and also makes an odd reference to having a new sparring partner for his lightbow) while Baze is best with blasters and bombs. They’re very well-liked among the new recruits, and even more liked among the Alliance; now that they have a place, and now that they’re legendary heroes of Scarif, it’s impossible to treat them with anything less than the utmost respect.

K-2SO goes wherever he’s needed.

“I work with Melshi’s team, mostly,” K-2SO says.

They held out hope for months that Cassian and Jyn were still alive, as impossible as it was.

“Scarif wasn’t destroyed,” Bodhi says, to Jyn and Cassian’s surprise. “It took a hell of a hit, but it’s still there. We went back, as soon as we could. A few days after the Death Star was destroyed. We looked everywhere, and we couldn’t find any sign of you. We… We thought you might’ve gotten out, or… Or you died in the blast.”

“The Alliance left Yavin 4,” Chirrut says. “But we returned to the old base, every few months or so. To see if anyone had been there.”

“Kay has been going through new recruit applications,” Baze says. “Looking to see if you might try to contact us that way.”

“Baze has visited Fest and Lah’mu, a few times, in case you went there,” K-2SO says.

Jyn and Cassian sit in stunned silence.

Their team spent so much time trying to find them.

No, not their team.

Their _family._

“Where were you?” Bodhi asks.

They tell their story.

Zeferino. The escape pod. The crash.

Their injuries.

Jyn lifts her shirt, and shows them the burn scars littering her abdomen and torso, and Cassian rolls up his pants legs, exposing his prostheses.

The others are stunned.

Jyn and Cassian talk about their life on Roon, and their long recovery. Jyn’s fields and crops. Cassian’s work with droids. Cassian learning to speak again. Jyn’s bouts of sobbing.

“It’s been… It’s been difficult,” Jyn says, biting her lip, and Cassian takes her hand.

“You seem… Better, though,” Chirrut notes. “Brighter.” He looks at Cassian, and adds, “And you too, Captain.”

“I’m not a Captain anymore,” Cassian replies.

Bodhi frowns. “You’re… You’re not coming back to the Alliance?”

Jyn doesn’t even have to look at Cassian.

They both are sure in their same answer.

“No,” she says.

K-2SO emits something of a squawk, while Baze and Chirrut look very unsurprised.

“Where will you go?” Chirrut asks.

“We were… thinking about going back to Roon,” Cassian says. “We like it there.”

“It’s isolated,” Jyn adds. “And quiet. And we… We have friends there. Lives, really. We’re happy. We’re… We’re done. We’re so done.”

Bodhi looks stunned.

“You can’t be _done,”_ K-2SO insists. “Cassian, you’ve only just--”

“Kay,” Cassian murmurs, reaching out, and gripping the droid’s shoulder. “Look at me.”

K-2SO does, looking Cassian up and down. Jyn is sure he’s taking in the way Cassian’s body trembles of its own accord, how Cassian’s legs are stiff, how his face is bisected by the scar, how the scar can be seen running down his neck and to his chest and arm.

“I’m done,” Cassian says. “But you can keep going.”

“But Cassian, without you--”

“Kay,” Cassian says. “Friend, not master. Remember? I’ll support you in whatever you choose to do.”

K-2SO hesitates.

“You’ve already been fighting without me,” Cassian continues. “Which is good. I’m glad, Kay. If you want to keep doing that work; then you should. Don’t follow me out of… Out of a sense of loyalty. Follow the cause, if that’s what you want. And, if you want, you can visit me.”

K-2SO gives a kind of sigh.

“I don’t know anything about Roon,” he says. “What’s it like?”

Cassian smiles.

“It’s temperate,” Jyn says. “We live in this city called Nime. It’s a port city, a _literal_ port city, on the edge of the Roon Sea. Three weeks ago, we went out in a _boat._ I’m going to teach Cassian to swim.”

“Maybe, I said _maybe--”_

Chirrut laughs, and Baze cracks a grin.

“There are a ton of creatures,” Jyn continues. “Banthas, and Mynocks, and Mogos. Oh, and Shamunaar. They’re huge, and they live in the mud.”

“This doesn’t sound very enticing,” Bodhi comments.

“You’ll have to see it, to get it,” Jyn says.

Bodhi looks at her, and then he nods.

“All right.”

 

* * *

 

Cassian and Jyn go back to Roon.

They return to their little apartment, and to their crops, and droids, and their friends.

Jyn gets the final okay that her burns are healed, though the scars will forever remain.

She does teach Cassian to swim, though he’s terrible at it, and dislikes it.

They keep going.

Chirrut and Baze are the first to join them.

The two men resign from the Alliance within two months of their meet-up on Fondor. Chirrut takes to the cool air and plains of Roon with delight, and Baze enjoys lounging in the mudfields, to the point that a local Shamunaar herd all but embrace him as one of their own.

The Roonians find Chirrut and Baze bewildering, but once they learn the two men are here for Jyn and Cassian, they understand.

But unlike Jyn and Cassian, Chirrut and Baze are open about being former Alliance members, and proudly talk about their role in destroying the Death Star.

Jyn quietly panics over this, worried the Roonians will treat her and Cassian differently now that they know their true allegiance, now that they know how she and Cassian came to Roon from Scarif.

Taissa catches her in the midst of these hysterics one day, and covers Jyn’s hand with her own.

“But Jyn,” she says, smirking. “We knew the whole time.”

In the two months Jyn was asleep, and Cassian awake but not entirely, the Roonians put the clues together. Two nearly dead travelers, in a fancy, phrik-enforced escape pod; coming to Roon on the same day the Empire and Alliance are observed fiercely battling over Scarif; two travelers who go out of their way to not talk about their pasts, and how they came to be on Roon. Two travelers who were clearly dealing not only with the trauma of a near-fatal crash, but of traumas that they did not dispute leaving them with _shellshock._

“When you put it like that…” Jyn says, and Taissa laughs.

Nothing changes.

The peace remains.

 

* * *

 

Bodhi and K-2SO decline to move to Roon permanently.

They stay with the Alliance.

But they do visit, with Bodhi flying the two of them to Roon.

K-2SO continues to work with Melshi, mostly, an arrangement he seems perfectly fine with. He expresses the fact that he misses Baze, behaves amicably towards Chirrut, and still seems to be both irritated at and bewildered by Jyn. Cassian continues to be his clear favorite, and the two of them go off on their own as soon as K-2SO and Bodhi land, with Cassian showing K-2SO the droids he’s working on, opening himself up to K-2SO’s comments and criticisms. He smiles through it all though, so Jyn allows K-2SO’s grumbling.

Bodhi continues to fly with Rogue Squadron, and brings stories and gossip with him to Roon. He shares reports of Alliance missions (reports he isn’t technically allowed to share) with Cassian, who takes them in, but never offers a verbal opinion on them. He tells Baze about the new technology the Alliance is developing and acquiring. He tells Jyn about the new worlds he’s seeing. And he tells Chirrut about someone called _Luke Skywalker,_ who Jyn gathers is part of Bodhi’s squadron, and a friend of Chirrut’s.

“The strongest stars have hearts of kyber,” is all Chirrut says when she asks.

Jyn still wears her kyber crystal necklace, even though it was chipped in the crash.

It rests on one of her burn scars, and seems to always be the perfect temperature.

She sits in one of her fields of crops, watching the sun set, and holds it in her hand, and thinks she can hear her parents’ voices.

_“Trust the Force.”_

_I know, Mama._

_“Jyn. My Stardust.”_

_It’s gone, Papa._

_We did it._

“Jyn?”

 

* * *

 

Cassian stands over Jyn, studying her.

She’s holding her kyber crystal in her hand, a thoughtful look on her face.

“Dinner’s ready. What are you thinking about?”

She shrugs, and gets to her feet, trying and failing to hide her wince as her burns stretch with the movement.

He stands still as she reaches up, and touches the thick scar bisecting his face. He catches her small frown, likely from her noticing it’s a little redder than normal.

“What did Kay do?” she asks.

“He heard of a new treatment from some system called Sernpidal,” Cassian says, with a little sigh. “Apparently there’s something about the flowers grown there that is supposed to heal thick scarring.”

Cassian has never heard of Sernpidal, and Bodhi had said it’s a system on the other side of the galaxy, near Wild Space. How K-2SO came to hear of it is beyond Cassian’s knowledge, or care.

“Worth a shot?”

Cassian shrugs.

“I’m not really bothered by it anymore,” he admits.

“Me, neither,” Jyn says, and he’ll never admit it, but he’s relieved to hear her say it.

“I think Kay just finds it… off-putting,” he notes. “I don’t look _correct,_ to him. Baze commented that Kay and I actually look a little alike now, with my prostheses, and everything. Kay _really_ didn’t appreciate that.”

Jyn laughs.

He watches her, as she pushes herself up on her toes, putting one hand on his face for balance, pressing a kiss to his scarred cheek. He catches her hand, holding it to his face, the cold band of his ring brushing her knuckles.

“Who made dinner?” she asks.

“Chirrut and me.”

“Thank the Force.”

He laughs. “Sure.”

She reaches out, and takes his hand. He lets his thumb rub the back of her matching ring.

“Let’s go home, Cassian,” Jyn says.

He smiles.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The end of this story really got away from me. I'm not sure why; scenes just kept popping up, and I was into them, and this happened. I thought about breaking it up, but nothing seemed quite right. So I just did the thing in one crazy long chapter that's almost a whole final act.
> 
> [I cannot overstate how poorly this story was planned.]
> 
> Roon is an Old EU planet, with Nime, Roonstones, the Roon Sea, the Cloak of the Sith, half/half weather, Koboks, and Shamunaar. Descriptions off Wookieepedia info. Roon is near Tatooine/Scarif on the ol' galaxy map. It is indeed isolated and antiquated, making it both a perfect hideout (which Zeferino knew when he sent them there, though he certainly did not know the escape pod, even phrik-enforced, would be nearly destroyed) and a perfect end for this story.
> 
> I am not a doctor nor a nurse nor any health practitioner. don't take the injury descriptions or healing processes too seriously. some research was done, but it's tricky because STAR WARS is advanced medical tech, but Roon isn't. so it's a weird balancing act. don't look down, the whole thing will fall apart.
> 
> the Sernpidal mention at the end is a tip of the cap to the Nonsense. i am also, apparently, incapable of writing a Universe where Cassian is not tied to Angels in some way. the Alliance destroying the Weapons Research Facility on Fest, via Rogue Squadron, is an Old EU event, also depicted in the Nonsense.
> 
> While the rest of Rogue One was pretty secure as a team/family, Bodhi included, Jyn and Cassian were not. they needed the time to figure themselves, and each other out. and with so much baggage and loss and trauma and miscommunication [made, uh, painfully literal in this chapter]: they really needed to begin again. this AU was more about them, and so the story ends with them, and them choosing the other before everything else. they just want to be together. they still have time.
> 
> I'm now going to finish the Leia and Ben/Kylo Ren retrospective story, and then I will see about finally cracking the Fima and Ersa TLJ story for the Nonsense.
> 
> If you liked this weird AU, please do tell me. it was really strange to write, being outside my 500k niche Nonsense universe. if it worked for you, that'd be cool to know. i am also on tumblr; theputterer there too, where i think a lot about STAR WARS and writing, mostly.


End file.
